


So Good to See You

by Lionsmane



Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Anders Being Anders, Anders/Bragi exploration, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, George and Annie fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mitchell angst, Smut, happy drunk scene, macabre party in vampire coven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionsmane/pseuds/Lionsmane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These chapters were inspired by the fic "A Poison in My Veins" by FiliKiliThorinForever, and is an extended alternate ending where the god and the vampire deal with the aftermath of a very bad day.</p><p>Read "A Poison in my Veins" before you read this; it will make more sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FiliKiliThorinForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiliKiliThorinForever/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Poison In My Veins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1925121) by [FiliKiliThorinForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiliKiliThorinForever/pseuds/FiliKiliThorinForever). 



So Good to See You

Ordinarily I’d have the decency to hold my tongue  
Then eventually I’d wind up opening a vein  
Rather pointedly you asked me if I planned to turn and run  
That’s a certainty when I’m this close to the drain

But it’s so good to see you

(Song lyrics by Shawn Colvin)

For the thousandth time George reminds himself to count his blessings. He sits down with a plate of toast, buttering it liberally, nodding gratefully to Annie as she pours him a cup of herbal tea to accompany his breakfast.

Mitchell is back with them again. There had been such an emptiness here without him. It had been like a family reunion when they'd gone to meet him at the airport.

But George wonders again what really happened to Mitchell in New Zealand, and if his friend really is better off here at all. They know something serious happened, but they haven't been able to get him to talk about it. They only know from his screams that echo through the house at night that his sleep is being deeply disturbed by dreams they can only imagine, and that weren't occuring before he left. Now Mitchell occupies the chair opposite him as though all one hundred seventeen years of his life have caught up to him. His eyes are hollow and unfocused and seem to be directed at George’s right elbow, his thick lashes blinking slowly. His spoon scrapes around the curve of his cereal bowl aimlessly, joining the sounds of George’s knife against the toast, and the coffee Annie is pouring into a cup by Mitchell’s wrist. Annie gives George a worried look, the same one they have been exchanging ever since Mitchell returned from New Zealand.

They have seen Mitchell’s full range of emotions, of course. They both remember fondly the times when they’d seen Mitchell happy, laughing with his full heart, his eyes drawn to merry slits with crinkles at their edges. They have seen him down as well, saddened and racked with guilt and self- loathing. They have seen the demon in him too, the dark side of Mitchell, so angry and enraged that they’d even been a little afraid of him.

But they have never seen him like this. Whatever Mitchell had felt in the past, he had always been passionate about it. But the heart seems to have gone out of him. Something has defeated the vampire. One would have thought he had become a ghost himself.

He’s been like this for weeks.

“So! What are you up to today, mate?” George breaks through the silence with an effort.

“hmm?” Mitchell surfaces.

“Yeah, isn’t it your day off?”

“umm, yeah, it is.” Mitchell frowns into his coffee as though looking for a possible plan to fill his day in the swirling black liquid, then seeming to realize the real purpose of the drink, brings it to his lips for a sip. He looks back at the two, who are regarding him with that look he knows very well. Annie is shuffling from foot to foot, her hands gripping the coffee pot a bit too tightly, her eyebrows raised with anticipation.

Too much anticipation.

If he tells them the truth, that he does not really have any plans for the day, they will pounce on him with a dozen ideas, each more cringingly unpalatable than the last.  Bingo at the community center, arts and crafts at the church, Tai Chi lessons.

He loves them for it, he really does. But he cannot bear another evening of Karoake with them at the bowling alley. Watching George and Annie perform “Don’t Go Breaking my Heart” together had been enough to cure him of ever enjoying karoake again, especially as the audience could only see and hear George’s part of the duet and not Annie since she was a ghost. And George’s voice…well…

“Well, actually,” He struggles to come up with a lie, quickly, “I was thinking I might—“

Abruptly there is a knock at the door. Annie jumps as though someone has stuck her with a pin and practically leaps for the front door.

Mitchell eyes her suspiciously, then feels George tapping his arm,

“yes? What were you thinking?”

George has the same look on his face that he had the night he and Annie had planned that dreadful surprise party for him two years before. Mitchell frowns at him, then turns back to the door.

Annie is enthusiastically welcoming someone into the front hall, someone in a long camel skin coat and leather gloves, someone in tailored pants and shoes who is smiling at her and brushing flakes of snow out of his mop of golden hair…

“Son of a fuckin’ bitch…”

Anders turns and smiles brightly at Mitchell. “Can’t argue with you there, mate.”

He doesn’t move at first, just sits staring with his mouth partly open. He slowly rises from his chair and moves through a strangely elongated sequence of seconds towards Anders whose arms open to receive him in an embrace that knocks the breath out of both of them. The blond smells of autumn leaves, soft leather and something deeper and yeastier like baked bread; his arms are rock hard against Mitchell’s back which brings a tightness to the brunet’s throat.

It’s been a long two months.

Mitchell has not been eating well or sleeping well, and depriving himself of blood has never been so difficult. But depriving himself of Anders has been the worst. He had left Anders’ apartment (their apartment) on that terrible morning without saying goodbye, without getting to see for himself that the blond was all right, that he had indeed been healed of those terrible injuries he himself had given him. Ty had assured him that Anders had been completely healed, that he would have no scars and he wasn’t in any pain. But even Ty had asked that he leave, that Anders was just barely conscious and still in shock, and seeing Mitchell that morning would be too much for him.

So he’d agreed to leave right then, to let Mike drive him straight to the airport. Partly he was riding his rage against Herrick, but under the fragile surface of that anger floated his last image of Anders, unconscious, his face swollen and bleeding and barely alive. The horror of it still screams at him, that it had finally happened, that Mitchell had finally done violent harm to someone he loved. Yes, he’d been drugged and manipulated into doing it, but it didn’t dull the guilt of it for him. Images of his attack on Anders now joined all the other memories of his victims that had haunted him all his life, taking up residence in his nightmares and pushing themselves constantly into his waking thoughts.

So he remained in Bristol, far from New Zealand so he wouldn’t be tempted to see Anders again, so he’d never put Anders in danger again.

But now Anders is here in his arms, whole and well and smiling at him. He holds him at arm’s length, barely believing it, lightly touching his face which is smooth and shows no marks of his attack at all.

“What are you doing here?!”

“I had some business in Norway so I thought I’d drop by and give you another chance to show me around Bristol, since you did such a shit job of it last time.”

He hears George clear his throat and looks over into the kitchen where Annie is practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, grinning so broadly her face might break, her hands dragging George’s sleeve down his arm.

“Well it looks like you guys need a room—I mean, _some_ room!” George stammers as both Annie and the two men turn to stare at him, “...you know, to catch up and talk, and do whatever you …need to do.” the werewolf blushes brilliantly.

Annie begins dragging George up the stairs, “So good to finally meet you!” she says to Anders, who smiles and nods back at her, “come on George weren’t you going to show me that, uh, that new book you got?”

“What? Oh, yeah, Angels and Demons.“

Their voices drift up the stairs.

Mitchell turns back to Anders, regarding him with a raised eyebrow. “They’ve been in contact with you haven’t they?

Anders’ blue eyes twinkle at him. “That’s a fine thing to say to the man who’s rescuing you from another night of karaoke.”


	2. Chapter 2

Intermittently I have to tell myself we had no past

And essentially that wanting you is just insane

There are those who say that it’s customary for a man to ask

In actuality I have been known to jump the train

 

But it’s so good to see you

(song lyrics by Shawn Colvin)

Anders takes another gulp of vodka, looking with some consternation at Mitchell who sits opposite him in the booth of the Shakespeare. The vampire is lounging against the dark wooden side of his seat, one knee pulled up, still regarding him with that same liquidy expression as though Anders had miraculously returned from some deadly spy mission…

And he looks bloody awful.

Well, as awful as Mitchell could look. He’s paler than Anders remembers, and thinner, and there are dark circles under his intense hazel eyes.

And he’s drinking a god damned _ginger beer…??_

They’d spent most of the day wandering around town, finally ending up down by the pier where the sea breeze had tossed the boats in their moorings and played glorious havoc with Mitchell black curls. Anders had found himself babbling on about J:PR, and Dawn and Ty’s recent engagement, and the weather in New Zealand compared to England, while Mitchell had mostly listened. Anders couldn’t help noticing that even with the cold wind lending a brightness to his eyes and cheeks, Mitchell still looks so damned _sad…_

Not that he can’t relate.

For Anders the last three months have veered between emotions he’d never experienced for anyone before. He’d woken up that awful morning with his body healed, but his mind still terrorized, his heart hammering, afraid first that Mitchell was still there and then shocked that Mitchell was gone… He wouldn’t even admit to himself how much he had relied on the skyping with Annie and George once they had initiated it. Skyping, and drinking, and trying not to sleep too deeply…

“So let me get this straight,“ he begins, “You're not drinking blood. You aren’t drinking alcohol either—“he nods at Mitchell’s drink with a twist to his mouth as he takes another sip of his own nearly finished vodka, “You don’t appear to have been eating…are you even fucking anymore?”

Mitchell smiles. “Nice to see you haven’t changed, mate.”

“You’re not are you?”

“Not what?”

“Fucking anyone?”

Mitchell laughs softly, shaking his head. Anders leans his head forward, resting his chin on his fist, looking at the vampire with wide eyes.

“My god you’re not even fucking yourself are you?”

“Anders…!”

The waitress who had been approaching their table turns on her heel towards a different table upon overhearing them, but Anders calls her back. She steps up to their table hesitantly, her eyebrows raised.

“What can I get for ya then?”

The blond turns the full strength of his smile towards her. “Yes, my friend and I would like to order a great deal of food. What are your specials?”

“Ahhh well, the kitchen doesn’t open for another 45 minutes, but we can do soups and salads for you in the meantime?”

Anders shakes his head, “No, no that won’t do.” Smoothly accessing Bragi, the blond gazes charmingly at their waitress, “ _You go back in there and tell them two expensive looking gentlemen are requesting full surf-n-turf meals right away, and if they are resistant send them out to talk to me, there’s a good girl.”_

She blinks and smiles, “All right, I’ll be right back.”

“And on your way back could you bring a Guinness for my friend please?”

“Yes, of course.”

Anders turns back to Mitchell, tossing back the rest of his drink, a look of pure joyous naughtiness on his face. The brunet has folded his arms across his chest and regards Anders with a permanently fixed eyeroll.

“’expensive looking gentlemen’?” he says, picking at his worn flannel shirt. 

“I HAVE offered to help you with your wardrobe in the past. It’s never too late you know…”

“Anders…”

The blond leans forward, grasping one of Mitchell’s arms and prying it loose from its folded position, then pulls Mitchell’s hand in its fingerless green glove across the table and cradles it in his own hands. Anders hooks his index finger into the space between the knitted glove and Mitchell’s wrist and slowly pulls the glove from the brunet’s hand.

“You are riding on way too many wagons, mate.” Anders whispers, his thumb circling against the skin of Mitchell’s bare palm. “And I am going to really enjoy causing you to fall off of as many of them as I can while I’m in town.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been to Bristol, or New Zealand, and I have not in fact seen the Almighty Johnson Episodes yet since I am an (whispered gasp) American so please forgive any foibles I am making and let me know of any glaring mistakes. The Shakespeare is a real pub in Bristol but I'm not sure they serve surf and turf or if they'd even call it that.


	3. Chapter 3

And anything I have is yours and yours alone

It’s a foregone conclusion

It’s a languid delusion

And it’s so good to see you 

(Song lyrics by Shawn Colvin)

Mitchell walks with Anders to the blond’s hotel through the snowy streets. Christmas lights are twinkling in people’s windows and doorways, as the Holiday is only days away. He wishes he could feel as merry and carefree as the people they are passing, their breaths blowing mists over their colorful scarves. One group of young women stumble by them singing a slightly slurred, giggly version of “Good King Wenceslas”…

Anders is merry, too, and dragging Mitchell by the hand urging him to walk faster. The brunet would not have this change. Not a single fleck of snow in Anders’ beard, not a square millimeter of blush in his cheeks, not one dumb joke or crass comment about figgy pudding…He loves every moment.

But he is on edge, too, his senses bristling ever since it got dark. He should have timed their exit from the restaurant better. Herrick hasn’t bothered Mitchell overly much since he returned, alone and so obviously suffering. He knows only too well Herrick likes it just fine when Mitchell suffers. But if his sire were to find out Anders was here… He knows the vampire leader has eyes everywhere and even suspects Herrick’s connection to him may be powerful enough not to even need spies…he’d had inklings of that over the years, that somehow Herrick always knew where he was, and who he was with…

They are vulnerable out here. The vampire knows that he is weak, having not fed in many months. He could take on two of them, maybe, if he were by himself, but with Anders here Mitchell’s heart seizes at every shadow.

He can see the hotel just up ahead, and pulls Anders closer to him, his arm snaking around the blond’s waist. Anders draws in a breath to make a wise crack, but then bites it back when he looks at Mitchell’s darkened eyes and furrowed brow. He goes a bit pale, remembering, just for a moment…

“What is it Mitchell?”

The brunet looks at him and tries to smile reassuringly. “Nothin’, It’s just best we get indoors.”

They walk on in silence.

When they finally reach the door to Anders’ room they are both trembling with relief. The blond fits the key into the lock and turns it, pushing it open and stepping inside, pulling Mitchell with him—

Only to feel the brunet pull back, remaining in the open doorway.

Anders turns, dismayed, but Mitchell tips his head to the side and smiles his warm Irish smile that always goes straight to Anders’ core.

“You have to invite me in, remember?”

“Oh god!” the blond’s hand flies to his forehead as his eyes close in disbelief. Mitchell begins to laugh. “Of all the god-damned ridiculous--- paradoxical--! A vampire needs _permission_ to enter your residence before he can rip your throat out! How could I forget something so fucking obvious!”

They are both laughing now, the tension of their walk dissolving into something warm and familiar that belongs only to them and that swims back and forth between their eyes.

“Get your genteel vampire ass in here.”

Mitchell steps inside, closing the door firmly behind him with relief.

When he turns back Anders has already peeled off his winter coat and scarf and is reaching for him, hooking one hand in Mitchell’s belt loop and pulling him towards the bed as the brunet unwinds his own scarf from his neck, letting it slither to the floor. The blond grasps Mitchell by the hips and turns him so they fall together onto the firm hotel mattress. Anders covers Mitchell’s body with his own, digging his hands behind the brunet’s shoulders and possessing the tilt of his head before pressing his open mouth down onto Mitchell’s parted lips. Anders tongue licks deeply into Mitchell’s mouth, a long breath exhaling out of him as though he’d been holding the air in his lungs all these weeks, his fingers threading through Mitchell’s dark curls.

He doesn’t see Mitchell’s eyes crinkling, his brow furrow into a wince at Anders’ lack of guile, lack of fear. The blond’ s total trust in him brings a trembling ache to his gut that travels up his forearms and into his hands, and sets his mind at war with his body. He revels in Ander’s touch, his mouth opening to accept Ander’s kiss, but his own limbs feel paralyzed and he caresses the blond curls and smooth shoulders tentatively, as though he could somehow apologize with his fingertips.

He had broken a promise. He cannot forget how much stronger his own body is compared to the precious blond body that makes love to him now, a gift he is still not certain he deserves. Anders touches him as though he has already forgiven Mitchell for an act he hasn’t even apologized for.

They haven’t even talked about it yet. And it doesn’t look like they will be talking about it right now.

Or more likely, knowing Anders, the blond is choosing to forget it ever happened, burying it deep, barricading it firmly away from interfering with his need for Mitchell to be the rational, unimpeachably good-hearted Mitchell he has known, and definitely not the psychotic, sadistic Mitchell Anders experienced on that terrible night some months ago.

For the moment, Mitchell closes his eyes and decides to join him there in that land of sweet denial.

He presses his mouth against Ander’s jaw, tasting and breathing in the rich bristly musk of the blond beard. Their bodies grind together through several layers of clothing and they breathe hard, their heat rising, their heads angling around each other and their mouths seeking warm skin wherever they can find it. Anders traces a hand down Mitchell’s chest and feels the brunet moan and shudder under him as he reaches the rim of his jeans and traces his fingers firmly against the hard shaft beneath the denim.

“So tell me you missed me,” whispers Anders, still stroking him and tracing his tongue along Mitchell’s bottom lip.

“I missed you, yeah.” Chokes Mitchell as he reaches for the buttons on Anders’ shirt. The blond sits up and pulls the shirt off, then works at the fasteners of Mitchell’s coat and flannel, tearing the sleeves only part way down the vampire’s arms so that he is effectively pinned at the elbows. Anders curls one arm under Mitchell’s waist, arching his body upwards, and uses his other hand to push the brunet’s black T shirt up to expose the long torso. The blond runs his hand over the cool skin of Mitchell’s chest, brushing his fingers across hardened nipples and dragging his lips and tongue down the smooth stomach. The vampire doesn’t need to breathe, but he still lets out a ragged set of breaths as Anders works his way down to the fly of his jeans, undoing it and exposing a hard bulge under black boxers.

“Honestly, Mitchell,” says Anders as he mouths the brunet’s cock through the cotton fabric, “do you have any clothing that _isn’t_ black?”

“ahhh…” breathes Mitchell, craning his hips upwards as Anders blows his hot breath against him, “well, you know, it’s so slimming…”

Anders grins, finally dragging the boxers down, He wraps his hand around the shaft and pumps slowly, eliciting another shiver from the brunet. Anders looks up at Mitchell’s gorgeous body for a moment, taking in his closed eyes and partly opened lips, his hands with their long tapered fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. The sight of him brings a small moan from Anders’ own throat and he suddenly dips his head down to catch one of Mitchell’s fingers in his mouth, pulling it deep inside and tracing his tongue over the seam between index finger and thumb.

“Oh god, please…” whispers Mitchell. Anders need no further inducement, and finally slips his mouth fully around Mitchell’s cock, wrapping his tongue around him once, and then takes him as far down into his throat as he can.

Mitchell’s head flies backwards, his mouth opening into a passionate groan as his hands paw at Ander’s shoulders and he pedals his long legs against the coverlet.

“gnnnhhh…Anders…I’m so close…”

The blond takes his mouth off Mitchell, quickly unzips himself, and brings both of their erections into his warm hand, pumping them together as he brings his body down and presses his forehead against Mitchell’s where his wide blue eyes stare down into equally wide brown ones.

When Mitchell’s back arches and his eyes squeeze shut it pushes Anders over the edge, too, and warm come collects between them before they both collapse against each other.

“Well that’s a first,” says Anders once he’s managed to catch his breath, as Mitchell chuckles softly under him.

“…we never even took our boots off.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A late night conversation.

It does not take them long to drop into a deep sleep, once they have cleaned up and stripped down to their boxers, tangled their legs together and drawn the hotel sheets and blankets over themselves. Anders is exhausted from a day of touring Bristol that had followed a 26 hour red-eye flight from New Zealand, and Mitchell wants nothing more than to bury himself in the blond’s scent and drift off.

It’s nearly 1 am when Mitchell wakes. He’s had the nightmare again, and his eyes fly open in a start, his body covered in sweat and shaking. Actually, he knows it’s not so much a nightmare, or even a dream really; his mind always seems keen to force him to relive his worst memories in his sleep. That’s what they are. Not dreams. Tenacious memories.

He’s dealt with the memories of his kills all of his life, but he’d gladly relive any one of the worst of them than the one that has continues to haunt his sleep almost every night since he left New Zealand.

The images still assail him, images that have haunted his dreams both waking and sleeping, half of which he isn’t even certain are real, or perhaps that is wishful thinking. He’s wondered how much the drugs in his system that night may have distorted his memory of what actually occurred. He wishes he could talk with someone about it. He’s been alone in these musings these past months, unable to bring himself to tell even his housemates.

He has never hidden his past from George and Annie. They know what he is and how he has lived at the expense of hundreds of innocents. But this…Somehow this is so much worse. He knows he is hurting them by shutting this away from them, but he is afraid of their reaction, and they are all he has left.

Anders still sleeps peacefully next to him, his golden head buried in the crook of his shoulder. Carefully so as not to wake him Mitchell pushes him gently backwards so as to look at him at arms’ length. . Snow is falling outside, and the moonlight coming in through the gauzy curtains over the hotel room window shines on Anders. The shadows of the snowflakes travel sideways down the contours of his temple, across the bridge of his nose, over dewy eyelids, sliding laterally down the topography of his face…

Mitchell reaches out his hand, stretching out his fingers, brushing them through the air in front of Anders’ right cheekbone, and then flinches as though struck by lightning as an image replaces the view before his wide open eyes--

  
_Anders screaming as Mitchell’s fingernails claw lines across that face,_

  
He gasps, feeling a stab of nausea in his stomach, closes his eyes and shakes his head to will the image away, but when he opens them again--

_Anders crying out in pain as his ribs crack from being thrown against a wall,_

  
Mitchell moans, pulling his hand back and anchoring it under his side, shutting his eyes again, but the images still come inside his head, flashing into his mind like a knife--

_Anders huddled into the corner of his bedroom walls as Mitchell slowly advances on him, his voice hoarse and shaking with terror,_

_“Mitchell, please, this isn’t you!”_

It had been real. All of it.

\-------------------------------------  
Anders is roused by the soft sobbing coming from the pillow in front of him, and opens his eyes to see Mitchell looking at him. Huge tears are sliding out of the vampire’s eyes and down into the fabric of the pillowcase.

“Mitchell…?”

“Sorry to wake you…”

Anders raises his eyebrows, blue eyes staring.

“Anders, how much do you remember from…that night?”

A shadow crosses the blond’s face as he shakes his head, “I’ve actually been working pretty hard to forget it.”

Mitchell’s mouth twitches as he nods. “I wish I could do that.” He reaches a hand out to pull the sheet away from Ander’s body, tracing his fingertips down his arms and chest. “No scars here, either.” He murmurs almost absently.

“No, Mitchell, so why—“

“Shhh…” He continues to lightly trace Anders’ arms, touching the places where the bloody gashes were in his memory, flinching as his own ruthless memory flashes at him. His long fingers spread against Ander’s chest, feeling the warmth and steady heartbeat of a human body fresh from a trusting, deep sleep.

Abruptly Mitchell’s body crumples inward, his forehead pressing against the blond’s sternum as his shoulders shudder with sobs he can’t contain.

“Mitchell,” Anders’ voice trembles slightly with forced cheer, “You’re creepin’ me out, mate.”

But it’s the pounding memory of Anders’ heartbeat that is filling Mitchell’s ears.

 _“Your heart was beating so fast…_ ” he gasps out, “ _you were so frightened…you were begging me to stop… and I just…!”_

Anders looks down at the tousled head against his chest and doesn’t know what to do. He’s never been very good at dealing with other people’s pain, particularly if it involved him, and Mitchell is bringing memories back into his mind that he’d been trying to lock away.

This feels all wrong.

Mitchell is the strong one, the wise one, the big brother he wished Mike had been. While his brothers criticize, judge, and roll their eyes at Anders, Mitchell’s twinkle-eyed gentle regard for him never seems to waiver. He was the first person he’d ever known who really knew everything about him, even the stuff that wasn’t so nice, and liked him anyway...loved him, in fact. He doesn’t want Mitchell falling apart against him. He doesn’t want him to be ashamed of that one horrible night, he wants them both to forget it, to go back to how easy and solid it had been, with Anders as flippant, thoughtless and full of himself as he needs to be and Mitchell as his tall, dark and understanding knight in knitted gloves.

His hand reaches up and fumbles awkwardly through the brunet’s curls, an ache pulsing in his chest as Mitchell’s shoulders continue to heave silently. Anders lets him cry, not sure what else to do, lowering his nose to bury it in the vampire’s hair and breathing in the sweet pine needle scent, sighing deeply, adding a soft “sshh” for good measure because he’d seen that comforting technique in a movie once.

Mitchell finally raises his head to look at Anders.

“ _God, I’m so sorry!”_ The moonlight is behind him and his face is in shadow but Anders can just make out the whites of his wide eyes amidst a mess of frazzled hair.

For a fleeting moment Anders considers using Bragi, but then thinks better of it. Something tells him Mitchell might resent that right now.

“Mitchell, it’s all right, you weren’t yourself that night.”

“But it _was_ me, I did those things to you…”

“You were drugged and brainwashed, Mitchell! That isn’t who you are...I know you, I know you never would have behaved that way otherwise.”

But he can see the brunet shaking his head against the pillow even before he has finished talking, “Anders, you’ve only known me for a few months.” Mitchell takes a long, ragged breath. “I’m over one hundred years old. I’ve killed hundreds of people, and I didn’t behave much differently with them than I did with you that night.”

“But you turned away from that life!”

“Yes…”

“Herrick manipulated you into a weapon and then pointed you at me, and then made sure I was right in your path!”

“...which exactly describes the last 80 years of my life before I met you, Anders!” Mitchell grasps the blond’s shoulders for emphasis, “...and all it took to drag me back to it was one drink and a voice on a mobile!”

They are silent for a moment. Mitchell’s fingers reach up to trace a path through Ander’s curls.

“Your brother Mike is right. You’d really be safer without me around--”

“--and completely miserable.”

Mitchell sighs heavily. “Yeah?”

Anders nods rather uncomfortably,casting his eyes downwards “yeah. I’m pretty much shit without you.”

One side of Mitchell’s mouth turns upwards at that. Anders look back up at him.

“You’re even worse, though, Mitchell. You look like death warmed over if you’ll forgive the pun. You obviously can’t live without me.”

The brunet snorts and laughs softly at this, so Anders presses on.

“Annie told me about your nightmares, how you’ve barely eaten or slept or enjoyed anything since you came back here. You really want me to leave and not come back?”

Mitchell doesn’t answer. He’s thinking of Herrick and the other vampires, wondering if they know yet that Anders is here and if they’ve traced them to this hotel. He imagines the cloaked, obsidian-eyed creatures circling around this fragile safe bubble of a hotel room like hyenas circling an isolated pair of gazelles.

“Don’t you think I knew it would be dangerous to come to Bristol to see you, Mitchell? I came anyway.“ Anders sits up beside Mitchell, “I don’t have any business in Norway. Dawn didn’t even book a return flight for me yet. I’ll take the danger, mate.”

They are silent again until Anders shrugs and speaks once more,

“Anyway, I can’t just let you get away. You’re way too good a lay.”

Mitchell lets out an amused breath at this as Anders pushes him over onto his back and flops down onto the brunet’s chest, his arms folded and one finger tracing a circle on Mitchell’s collarbone.

“...So we take some precautions, that’s all. We watch what you drink, “ he whispers. mouthing a kiss to the crook of Mitchell’s jaw, “...we cancel your mobile,” he presses another kiss against Mitchell’s earlobe, breathing warmly into his ear “and if you still really feel worried for me I could always tie you to the bed before we go to sleep every night.”

Mitchell smiles and hmphs softly, catching Anders’ head in his hands, bringing his lips to his. They both smile into the kiss, which quickly becomes more serious, and then sloppy, their heads angling and jaws opening to access every bit of each other’s mouths.

OK, this is nice...

But Anders can still feel Mitchell hesitating, the brunet’s hands fluttering over his back as though he is afraid to touch him. Suddenly the frustration of it peaks in him; his lover’s sadness, and the darkness and danger around them, and the violent memory that seems to threaten everything and all this walking on eggshells around all these fucking _feelings…_  


 

He pulls abruptly away from the kiss with an overwelming urge to cut through all this crap.

“For God’s sake, Mitchell,” Anders clicks his tongue impatiently and he takes both of Mitchell’s hands and moves them firmly down to clutch his own buttocks, then practically shouts down into Mitchell’s wide eyed face,

“ _I feel like I’m fucking a virgin!!!!”_

Mitchell’s head tosses back into the pillow and his generous mouth opens into a full hearted laugh. The rich sound falls on both of them like warm rain. Anders feels the knot loosen in his gut, and dissolves into giggles himself, his head falling against Mitchell’s shoulder. They laugh helplessly until the last of the tension is wrung from them, and then the brunet rolls the god over onto his back and wraps his long arms around him, settling his hipbone against Ander’s crotch and grasping Ander’s head firmly and angling it to look directly into his eyes,

“So what you’re telling me is,” says Mitchell as his knee slowly pushes Anders’ legs apart, “You’d like to be touched with a bit more conviction?”

“mmmh…” is all Anders has the chance to say.

Yes, this was much better.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...Ever get the feeling you are being watched?
> 
> Just because you have that feeling doesn't mean it's true.
> 
> ...Right?

Mitchell has noticed this about human beings, that they tend to believe in their own invincibility even when all evidence around them points to the contrary.

And he’s never met anyone more human than Anders.

Morning light shines through the window onto the hotel bed. He can hear the sounds of shower water running in the bathroom; Anders had woken before him and gone in to wash up. Mitchell lounges with his arms around his pillow, blinking at the infrared images the patterns of light from the window burn temporarily into his retinas. It is somewhat uncomfortable for him, as he closes his eyes and the pattern of the windowpanes show up as bright purple squares on the insides of his eyelids, complete with the dark bump of the window’s latchkey on the right edge.

Uncomfortable, but not nearly as painful as it would have been a few years ago when he was a fully blooded vampire, feeding regularly.

The snowstorm is over, and the sun is bright. This is at least one advantage they have over Herrick if he is looking for them. Most of the Bristol coven are young and won’t be able to handle all this sunlight, especially as it will be reflecting off fresh snow. And Mitchell knows Anders will want to be out today, out with people, out with the frivolity of Christmas shoppers and the sights of the season even though neither of them is religious. During the day, if they stay in crowded areas they will probably be all right. And it occurs to Mitchell that since there is a tradition of gift giving this time of year there is something he’d like to get for Anders…

...but there is something else he’d like to give him first, as he finally rolls his long limbs out of bed, grabs a condom and the bottle of lube and makes his way to the sounds of running water.

Anders is standing under the warm water with his eyes closed, leaning against the shower wall with his hands spread on either side of the faucets, occasionally reaching to turn the cold down further to maintain the heat since the hot water is steadily running out. He feels Mitchell slide in behind him and press close against him.

“Mornin’.” Mitchell mumbles into his ear in a voice still deep and rough from sleep. Anders hums in response, not even opening his eyes as he feels the vampire’s arms wrap around him and hold him gently, his lips nuzzling in the crook of his neck. They stand together like that for a long moment, the warm water pooling in the pocket created by Mitchell’s forearms pressed against Anders’ chest and spilling down in soft splashes onto the floor.

Anders turns to face Mitchell, pushing one hand into the space between the brunet’s upper arm and chest, the other reaching up to trace a strand of wet black curl plastered against Mitchell’s beautiful jawline. Pure affection radiates down at him from the almond brown eyes, crinkled at the edges from the contented feline smile on the full lips. Anders cannot imagine at this moment that the tall man before him could ever possibly have harmed anyone. For Mitchell’s part, every moment he spends with Anders this way stitches something back together inside him that had torn open, that he’d never thought he could repair.

They leave it like that for a time, needing no words, their foreheads falling slowly together as they rest themselves in this place that feels so safe...Anders’ mouth reaches for Mitchell first, gently capturing his bottom lip. They tilt their heads and give the kiss proper attention, but still very slow. The warm mist keeps their lips wet and they slide against each other pleasantly, their heat slowly rising until Mitchell finally reaches down and turns the water off.

“I’ll get cold…” Anders whines, but Mitchell turns him around and draws him back against him, reaching for the lube and adding some generously to his hand.

“No you won’t.” He whispers with a hint of humor, and wraps his lubed hand around Anders’ shaft and slides firmly up and down it, playing carefully around the tip with his thumb as the organ hardens in his grasp. Anders lets out a deep sigh and tips his head back against Mitchell’s shoulder in complete submission, reaching his hand up to tangle his fingers in dark wet curls. Mitchell takes Anders’ other hand and brings it behind them, anchoring it to a steel safety bar there, whispering, “hold on now…”

Anders whimpers and swears softly as Mitchell takes his time with him, lightening his touch as his cock grows hard, using his other hand to stroke his chest and side. He finally gets the lube again and coats his other hand, then reaches around and underneath Anders, feeling his way to the muscular opening there and gently inserting one digit while never stopping his stroking attention to the blond’s cock.

Anders’ breath hitches and then lengthens into a full throated moan as Mitchell inserts a second finger and probes inside, reaching and fluttering against the warm inner walls, now holding Anders’ body firmly between his two working hands.

“Have I ever told you how much I love your long arms?” says Anders shakily, feeling Mitchell smile against his neck. He pulls his fingers out carefully, and it only takes the brunet a moment to roll a condom onto his own very rigid shaft and reposition himself. He wraps an arm tightly around Anders’ waist and lifts him slightly, sliding downwards and bracing his own legs against the floor to slowly push himself into the blond until he has filled him completely. He stays there and does not move for a moment; they are both breathing hard now and Mitchell can feel Anders’ heart beating fast, but knows that this time it is not from fear.

“Are you all right?”

“God, yes.”

“Want more?”

“mmm hmm..” Anders’ reaches back to grasp Mitchell’s hips and pulls him closer in answer. Mitchell guides both of his hands back to the steel safety bar behind them and anchors him there, then wraps both his arms around Anders’ body and begins to thrust into him slowly. The blond rolls his hips against him, his feet pushing against the floor trying to bring Mitchell deeper.

“nnngh, faster, please, faster…”

Keeping their bodies together, Mitchell abruptly flips them around so Anders is facing the wall, the vampire’s body pressing him hard into the tiles, his hands and arms covering Anders’ hands and arms in a splayed position, his cheek pressed against Anders’ cheek turned sideways. But before he fulfills Anders’ request for more speed, the brunet wraps a protective hand around the blonde's cock to shield it from the ungiving wall…

Then Mitchell takes full advantage of newfound leverage.

The speed and rhythm of it drives colors into Anders’ head, and he is vaguely aware that they are both vocalizing loudly. His soft body is pushed and pounded against cold tiles but Anders feels none of the harshness as Mitchell seems to be trying to press every inch of himself so closely to him that he might merge into him, temple to temple, hip to hip, thigh against thigh. The blond is penetrated so deeply his feet leave the floor, and something strong and sweet stabs at his heart as he listens to Mitchell’s ragged cries so close to his ear that he almost mistakes them for his own.

It does not take them long to finish, and they slide together bonelessly to the floor of the shower, eyes closed, arms and legs tightly entwined, breathing hard. It takes some time for them to calm, for their bodies to start to notice how hard the floor is, how cramped their legs feel, how annoying the drip of the faucet is becoming.  
“Okay,“ says Anders finally, patting Mitchell affectionately, “now I am starting to get cold.”

\--------------------------------------------

Mitchell has dressed in the only clothes he has with him and sits in the armchair in the corner of the room, watching with a bemused expression as Anders fusses over himself. The blond finishes tucking the dark blue dress shirt into his pants and draws the leather belt to the tension he wants it, fastening the buckle around his trim waist. Mitchell isn’t certain but he thinks Anders is a little thinner than the last time he saw him. Still muscular though, still beautifully made and shamelessly conscious of it.

Mitchell resists asking him if he actually even owns a T shirt or pair of jeans.

“So where do you want to go today?” smiles Mitchell, crossing one long leg over the other and folding his hands behind his head.

“oh, I’ve got a few ideas…” says Anders absently as he runs a comb through his beard and tames his curls by running a bit of gel through it with his fingers. Abruptly he turns and leaps on Mitchell, pinning him into the armchair with his knees and running the remains of the gel through the brunet’s unruly curls.

“Oi!!!” cries Mitchell, batting his hands away. Anders laughs because the vampire’s efforts are too late. Mitchell growls in frustration, looking at the blond from under forbidding eyebrows as the blond merrily continues to stroke the black curls with both hands.

Anders rests his forehead against those dark brows and speaks quietly. “I’m taking you to a men’s clothing store today.”

Mitchell’s jaw sets. “Like Hell you are.”

“Like hell I’m--”

Mitchell’s mobile rings.

It stops everything. They both straighten up, staring down at the phone ringing and vibrating fitfully on the nightstand.

Anders climbs off of Mitchell as they both approach the mobile cautiously. Mitchell shakes himself, trying to remain rational.

“It’s George’s ringtone, babe, no worries.”

Anders looks at him, his smile fragile. “cool...put him on speaker.”

Mitchell presses the phone to speaker and speaks.

“George?”

“Hey mate! You guys havin’ a good time then?”

The two men exhale slightly, both doing their best to conceal that they were worried in the least. Anders runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. Mitchell drops to his haunches and smiles in relief at his friend’s affable voice.

“Yeah, yeah we’re good. How are you mate?”

“Well, ya missed a great episode of “the Real Hustle” last night. ‘Did the whole show on those mediums who convince people they can contact their dead relatives. First time Annie actually watched it with me. She was really worked up about it; sorry you missed out on that.”

“Oh, no _shit!_ ”

Anders listens with a rueful smile as Mitchell banters with his flatmate. So that’s what friendship sounds like. He isn’t jealous exactly, but somehow listening to them makes him feel a bit homesick.

No, that can’t be possible…

“So Annie and I were wondering if you’d both join us for dinner tonight? Would that be all right with your plans?”

Mitchell looks questioningly at Anders, who shrugs and nods.

“Sure mate, what time?”

\-----------------------------------------------

They spend the day in the most crowded areas of Bristol, walking through narrow streets filled with people and lined with shops that have maxed their budgets on decorations to entice shoppers to buy from them. The sun is bright and the snow lies in high drifts everywhere, so white and reflective that every human Mitchell sees shields their eyes with sunglasses, same as Anders and himself. They blend in seamlessly, eating lunch in a small restaurant that Mitchell selects for its large windows that let sunlight stream in on their table as they eat french onion soup and crisp green salads with spiced oil and vinegar.

Mitchell still will not drink anything unless it comes to the table in a sealed bottle, and still has not had any alcohol. It hadn’t escape Anders’ notice that he’d left his Guinness untouched the night before. He decides not to press the issue, smiling indulgently at the vampire as he drinks a Perrier. Mitchell is describing the first time he and George had encountered Annie and recounting how startled and outraged the werewolf had been at first at the idea of a ghost living in his flat with him, a ghost who could pop around his private living environment at will, which had not been something George had been comfortable with at first.

Inevitably they find themselves in front of John Anthony’s on Philadelphia street. Anders whips his sunglasses off and grabs Mitchell by the wrist and begins to pull.

Mitchell pulls off his own shades and pulls back,firmly resisting.

“No, Anders...NO!”

“Oh, come on Mitchell…”

“There is no way I am going in there.”

“One outfit. Please. A Christmas present for me?”

Mitchell folds his arms over his chest and glowers at him.

“Anders, that place is wall to wall mirrors. I can’t go in there...I’d start a mass panic!”

Anders shakes his head. “I looked it up. There are only a few in there, easy to avoid, and Bragi can cover for you if anything happens.”

Mitchell’s eyebrows raise. “You looked it up?”

  
Anders grins broadly. Mitchell’s mouth twists as he looks at him, at the sparkling blue eyes and turned up mouth that fully deepens the dimple on one side of his face.

He widens his own eyes so the whites show all the way around his irises.

“No. Jacket. No. Tie.”

Anders laughs triumphantly and drags Mitchell into the store.

“And if anyone comes near me with a tape measure I will wrap it around their neck!”

The first floor has a more casual selection, with shelves of crisply folded designer jeans and racks of collared shirts. Mitchell notices this as Anders pulls him up to the second floor where the more formal wear hangs in silken, wool and rayon bunches of grey and navy blue. Headless mannequins garbed in Armani perch ominously above the displays, their torsos entwined with white christmas lights, scarves of red and green fabric hang from the ceiling.

A primly dressed sales clerk with greying hair approaches them almost immediately. Anders nods smoothly at him and shoves Mitchell quickly into a dressing room before the man can notice the vampire’s missing reflection in the three-paneled mirror inside it, closing the door on the vampire and telling him just wait here...

And Mitchell turns to face three floor-length mirrors that show no image of him at all.

But Anders works fast, making good use of the eager clerk (and Bragi as well, Mitchell suspects,) and manages to bring him a surgically small selection of pants and shirts that fit him perfectly, and don’t actually make him sick.

Finally Mitchell looks down at a pair of black silk pants that fit his long legs as though they’d been tailored, and buttons up an equally fitting shirt of shimmering dark green. He looks up at Anders whose blue eyes are his only mirror. The god’s face is framed in the doorway of the dressing room, holding the door open just enough to see in but not allow the nosey clerk to intrude.

Anders’ expression is so neutral that Mitchell thinks the outfit must be a failure. But he’s misjudged one emotion for another, as he finds out when Anders slips into the dressing room with him to let him know exactly how much he does indeed approve of the way the green in the shirt brings out the green flecks in Mitchell’s eyes, and how very easy the buttons are to undo. They almost get themselves in deep trouble when the clerk comes to investigate the rather suggestive shuffling and moaning sounds coming from the room but when Anders innocently opens the door fully clothed and appears to be the only one there, the clerk eagerly goes out to find the other dark haired young man Bragi informs him went to look at the accessory display.

As they pass down through the first floor of the store Mitchell catches Anders by the arm and orients him towards the shelves of blue jeans.

Anders rounds on him. “NO.”

Mitchell smiles, gets behind him and pushes him relentlessly towards a dressing room. “Oh yeah.”

“Hands off me you gothic Dracula!”

He turns around to see the most charming and beguiling expression he has ever seen on any human face.

“Trust me? Please?”

Mitchell turns out to be just as efficient as Anders in his selections, and a short while later the blond regards himself critically in a pair of light blue stonewashed jeans and a black, long sleeved crew-necked shirt of soft stretchy cotton.

Now it is Mitchell’s turn to poke his smiling face into the dressing room. “Your ass looks great in those.”

Anders raises an eyebrow. “So...what, it didn’t look great before?”

They leave wearing their purchases, their old clothing folded into a store bag. The sun is starting to near the horizon, and Mitchell is relieved that he’d chosen a time to meet George and Annie for dinner that takes them off the streets early. Anders laments leaving the streets of Bristol just as the night life is beginning; he prefers to enjoy city life by night, in the pubs and bars. He knows Mitchell does, too. But he can see the vampire bristling again as he had the evening before, casting surreptitious glances into alleyways or dark doorways that they pass.

They hail a taxi and Mitchell tells the driver to head for the corner of Henry and Windsor Terrace. Settling into the cab’s back seat the brunet finally seems to relax, and Anders reaches for his hand, still clad in the fingerless gloves. He hadn’t been able to talk him into a new, intact pair of leather ones, though not for lack of trying.

“Okay, mate?”

Mitchell brings Anders’ hand to his lips. “Yeah,” he says, smiling and pressing a kiss to Anders’ thumb. “Thanks for a nice day.”

The blond leans in, letting his hand slip down between Mitchell’s wool coat and the new silk shirt, teasing his fingers up the brunet’s spine. “Still in for a nice night, yes?” he whispers. They enjoy the ride to the pink house, which is disappointingly short, but happily uneventful.

Anders had told Mitchell he’d take the danger. But he wonders, not for the first time, just how much danger they are really facing.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh my _god!!!_ ”

Annie squeals her full approval of Mitchell’s new clothes as he and Anders shrug out of their coats in the entryway.

“Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get him to do that? You’re a miracle worker!”

Anders kisses her on the cheek, his blue eyes twinkling, and hands her a velvet string bag with two bottles of red wine in it.

“Yeah…” says Annie, distractedly, noticing how good Anders himself looks in black, “a miracle worker, thanks!”

She and the blond drift into the living room where Annie drags him over to the tiny Christmas tree she has stood in the corner where she has been busy with a bowl of popcorn and needle and thread. Anders sets the wine down under the tree and then reaches for a handful from her bowl and pops it into his mouth as she laughs and elbows him. They quickly enter into deep conspiratorial conversation, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Mitchell joins George in the kitchen, smiling at the menorah in the window, and the small ceramic Buddha in the center of the table that his friend is setting with four place settings. Several votive candles flicker meditatively around the fat little statue. The rich smell of lasagna emanates from the oven.

“This is great George, thanks so much.” Mitchell pats his friend on the shoulder and sits in one of the chairs as George busies himself with a tossed salad. “Still an equal opportunity house, then?”

“Oh yes,” says George,“We welcome all religions, creeds, ethnicities and all creatures mythical and/or magical so long as you don’t leave dirt on the carpet.” George nods to something else on the table Mitchell hadn’t noticed yet, “We even honor Norse gods.”

There on the table, set in between two votive candles is a small pewter cup with some etchings on its sides that flicker in the candle light. Mitchell frowns and reaches for it. The image of some sort of vine twists around an inclined mandolin on the polished metal surface.

“Bragi, god of poetry…” pronounces George in that geeky intellectual way that he has as he slides some chopped cucumber into the salad, “He’s brilliant, eloquent, is supposed to be able to charm any audience,has a lovely singing voice and is currently living inside your boyfriend. Right so far?”

Mitchell stares at the cup and shakes his head, an ache in his chest once again in the face of the effort made for him by the people who care about him.

“Right, yeah.” he stutters. “This is really cool, George.”

God that sounded inadequate.

But George doesn’t notice. “Found it on ebay.  We want all our supernaturals to feel welcome, even the pagan ones.”

Mitchell hasn’t really researched the details of the pagan god that occupies Anders’ body; he’s been more concerned about Anders’ own personality. But of course George would have, George would learn every detail not only about Bragi but about the entire Norse pantheon right down to the color of their togas.

He looks up at George from the table, tapping the cup in his hand. “So why the cup?”

George lights up with the chance to share his extensive knowledge and sits down opposite Mitchell as the facts flow happily out of him. Mitchell smiles, listening at length.

“...so the “mead of poetry” is actually a mythical beverage that gives the drinker the ability to recite any information and solve any question. The cup is like a metaphor for poetic inspiration. It’s a symbol associated with Bragi because the story goes that Odin drank a bunch of the stuff before sleeping with this woman named Gunnlod and got her pregnant. Bragi was the child born of that union.”

Mitchell crinkles his eyes in amusement.. “So the magic mead got into the baby through the father?”

“Yeah, sounds a bit wonky. Makes you think twice about what you might imbibe before a hot date, like if you drank a bunch of Manischewitz and fucked your girlfriend you might knock her up with a baby predisposed to be strictly kosher...but we’re talking pagan stories here. You go back far enough and the whole world is riding on the back of a giant turtle isn’t it?”

George grins, truly and really pleased to see Mitchell laughing. In fact his friend looks happier than he’s looked in months. This kiwi he’s met seems to be doing him good, more good than he and Annie could do him, honestly. But then, why would Mitchell leave that and come back to Bristol?

“So you and Anders are good then?”

Mitchell strokes the pewter cup with his thumb absently. “Um, yeah,” He smiles genially at George, “really good.”

“Weren’t you guys doing this well in New Zealand?”

Mitchell sighs heavily, seeing where this is going.

“Something happened didn’t it?”

He looks at George, one eyebrow raised. George counters by raising both of his.

Oh well. He never _could_ keep anything from George.

“Herrick visited New Zealand a few months ago.”

George nods slowly, grimly. “So, he attacked Anders?”

“Worse than that.” Mitchell’s voice is low. “He figured out a way to drug me and got _me_ to attack him.”

George blanches a bit. “How the hell did he manage that?”

Mitchell sets the cup back onto the table. “Because I got too relaxed and let my guard down.” he drags a hand through his hair, looks at George from under brows grown dark again. “I lost two weeks. And when I came to I was covered in blood. Anders’ blood.”

“George, I almost killed him.”

  
“God…” whispers George, and they are quiet for a moment. So that was why he’d come back. “This drug, how exactly did it work?”

“I think it just took away my will, made me more susceptible to suggestion, brought the vampire in me closer to the surface…”

“So Herrick pulled your strings and made you attack Anders.”

Mitchell nods.

“Did he intend for you to kill him?”

Mitchell frowns, then nods again.

George leans forward and grasps the brunet’s arm. “But you didn’t.”

Mitchell looks at him sharply.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were under the influence of that drug during the entire attack, right? And you woke up, and Anders was hurt but still alive?”

“Yeah.”

George leans forward further, talking with his hands now. “Okay, Okay, so you were completely under Herrick’s influence but you still resisted his ultimate intention. You could have killed him, Mitchell, easily, we both know that. _But you didn’t._ Otherwise Anders would have been dead when you came to.”

Something cool breaks over Mitchell’s senses as he hears George’s words. His eyes widen at his friend. But he hardly dares to go down this road in his mind, and his feet shuffle uncomfortably under the table.

“Maybe it’s not much, “ says George, “I mean, I can only imagine how you felt Mitchell. You obviously really care about him and it must have awful, really awful...but it’s still something, isn’t it? This ended differently from all those other times. You stopped. _You were drugged out of your mind with Herrick’s voice in your head and you STILL stopped.”_

Mitchell looks at his friend as though he is seeing him for the first time. A lump forms in his throat as he dares to think that George just may have a point.

It’s at this moment that they hear laughter rolling out from the other room and Annie and Anders come tumbling into the kitchen.

“He ate all of the popcorn!” cries Annie, who is nonetheless laughing, too.

“Well, I was hungry!” laughs Anders.

“He was even eating it off the tree; we need to feed this guy, George, right away.”

“Or at least get me drunk. You guys got any spirits other than holiday ones?”

“Oh my god!!” exclaims George, smacking his head, “I haven’t even offered you drinks yet! “ He opens the small fridge and shows the contents to all of them. Amidst some miscellaneous condiments, milk, eggs and packages of half eaten cold cuts, a six pack of Guinness sits next to a full bottle of vodka...which is right beside a full case of ginger beer.

“Oh how I do adore your friends, Mitchell!!” cries Anders, pouncing on the vodka and sidling over to Mitchell to claim a seat and grab a glass from the table. The blond does a slight double take when he sees Mitchell’s face. Mitchell smiles his same warm Irish smile, but his eyes have an extra sheen to them.

“Hey, mate,” Anders leans in, “everything OK?”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Mitchell, quickly wiping the corner of one eye.

Annie approaches the fridge and looks at Mitchell.

“What do you think, Mitchell? A Guinness for the holiday?”

Mitchell looks at George and notices that his friend has already grabbed a ginger beer and cracked it open. “Go on mate. I’ll be your designated driver tonight.”

“I thought that was my job,” says Annie rather crossly.

“No, now you know we’ve discussed this. You can’t drive Annie, a car rolling down the street without a driver would freak people out.”

Anders nudges the vampire, “Go on Mitch. You’re safe here, among friends, it’s the holiday. Have a real drink and let yourself loosen up tonight.”

Mitchell tries to roll his eyes at them but he is undone.

“Oh, what the hell.”

___________

The evening progresses successfully. Anders is as endeared by the pewter cup as Mitchell and insists on drinking exclusively from it all during dinner, although since it is rather small this necessitates many refills. But this turns out to benefit Annie who otherwise would have nothing to do but watch them all eat, and who pronounces herself happy to keep getting up to retrieve the vodka from the fridge, winning Anders’ undying love and approval when she says that warm vodka wasn’t worth drinking.

And drink they do. Even Annie seems to slowly be falling into her cups, as she is so connected to them and touches them and leans on them so much (particularly Anders, who doesn’t discourage it in the least) that her ghostly form takes the alcohol in as though she were drinking it herself.

After dinner George pulls out a rented copy of Casablanca and they all curl up next to the almost completely unadorned Christmas tree to watch it. Mitchell refuses to tell them which scene contains that part where he’d knocked over a chair, to which Anders bemoans in a rather vodka slurred voice that that will mean they will have to pay close attention to the whole bloody movie. Mitchell just sits back lazily with his fifth Guinness, eyes twinkling and proclaiming that this movie’s quality and caliber deserves their full attention and they can get the fuck over it.

When the actual scene does present itself they are distracted by George tripping over an actual chair in the kitchen and taking rather a nasty fall. This entertains them all thoroughly since George _was_ the only one of them who had stayed sober all evening, and they are laughing helplessly until they realize George really did hurt himself and is limping into their midst telling them hotly that he’d appreciate it if they’d stop laughing like a bunch of silly drunks and get him an ice pack.

Once George sits comfortably on the couch, tucked in with pillows and blankets with his ankle elevated, and placated with a cup of tea, they return their attention to the movie and attempt to find the scene again that they had missed. But the dvd player suddenly decides to malfunction, and it seems that they are fated to miss Mitchell’s big moment in the classic film and even to miss seeing the remainder of the film altogether.

Anders climbs to his feet at this point, rather unsteadily, claiming that he has a solution. He disappears into the kitchen, weaving a bit, and returns dragging a chair with him to a chorus of “oh nos” and “come ons” and Annie’s laughter that rings like bells in their ears. Mitchell emphatically shakes his head as Anders reaches for him but Annie gets behind him and pushes and between the two of them they maneuver the vampire to his feet. He finally stands next to the kitchen chair, his six foot tall torso swaying slightly, a half finished bottle of Guinness in his hand, and smirks down at his three friends dubiously as they applaud him in advance and call for their very own private performance of chair tipping.

Mitchell looks at them, looks at the chair, takes a long swig of Guinness, and then pushes carelessly at the chair with the back of his hand, sending it toppling onto its side.

They applaud and cheer him, and he bows for them with one arm behind his back and the other (the one with the bottle) folded in front, taking care not to bow too low because he worries he might just fall over forward if he does that.

When George suggests this would be a great time for charades, Anders points out the lateness of the hour and reminds Mitchell that he needed to pick up some extra clothes from his room, didn’t he?

Anders follows Mitchell upstairs, and the brunet finds it difficult to pack a small bag with clothes that he might need. Anders’ irrepressible drive to touch Mitchell and finally fully enjoy the new clothes he had bought for him proves very distracting.

Whether due to mutual desire or just plain gravity they finally fall together onto Mitchell’s unmade bed. Anders’ hands are warm as he slides them over the smooth fabric of Mitchell’s shirt, and traces his palm firmly against the brunet’s crotch, commenting softly on how much he loves silk. They are both beginning to think it might be nice to just stay there tonight until--

George’s voice comes loudly through the door announcing that he’s prepared to drive them back to the hotel whenever they are ready.

\-----------------------

The ride back sobers Mitchell up slightly. It is kind of George to drive them, and when he drops them off Mitchell pats his friend and advises him to get straight home, and to call him when he gets there. George promises, and drives away in the dark.

\------------------------------------

The quiet of their hotel room is a relief to their ringing ears and dizzy heads. After flipping on one of the bedside lamps, Anders pushes Mitchell up against the wall and they share a languid, breathy kiss as the room slowly turns.

“mmm” Anders buries his nose against the bare skin of Mitchell’s collarbone, brushing his lips against the silk of the shirt, feeling Mitchell’s mouth press against his ear and his hands play with his curls.

“Hold that thought,” says Anders, pulling away reluctantly, “I’ll be right back.”

But in the time it takes for Anders to use the bathroom and return to the bedroom, Mitchell has curled up on the bed and fallen asleep. The vampire appears to have managed to kick his shoes and socks off, but is still wearing the new clothes Anders had bought him that day. Again Anders congratulates himself on his choices. In the light of the bedside table lamp the deep green fabric of the silk shirt scintillates against Mitchell’s pale olive skin, and the black pants cling fetchingly to his muscled legs. The brunet’s arms are folded tightly across his chest as he lies on his side.

Anders sighs. Even in sleep Mitchell’s body language is still restrained, as though…

_An im_ _age flashes across Anders mind, of Mitchell’s eyes suddenly opening, of pure ebonied evil looking back at him…_   


 

The room is suddenly small, isolated, far from his family, far from ANY help…

But he shakes his head brusquely, snorting in disgust at himself. He is jumping at shadows. They have been careful all day and there is no reason to be paranoid. He cannot let his fears govern him, ruin this time they have. He cannot live like that; then _they_ would have already won.

Quietly he presses the switch to turn the lamp off, and crawls onto the bed behind Mitchell, draping one arm around him and pulling the blanket over both of them before nestling his face against the soft silk of the brunet’s shirt, and drifting off to sleep.

\-----------------------------------

Anders doesn’t know what time it is when he hears a voice in his ear, a voice with a strange timber as though it was coming from underwater. He recognizes it but something is off, something about it chills him to the bone,

_“Anders…”_

He feels sluggish, he can’t seem to move his limbs…

“ _wakey wakey little god…”_

Anders rolls slowly over onto his back, opening his eyes.

The hotel room is dark. Only a small amount of pale moonlight shrouded by clouds filters through the window and shadows dance against the walls of the room as wind pushes the tree branches back and forth. A low moan seeps into the room from the wind seeking its way in through the cracks in the window panes.

A shadow stands there in the moonlight.

Anders feels next to him in the bed for Mitchell but his hands encounter only empty blankets.

He is paralyzed. His heart seems to have moved up into his throat and prevents him from uttering a sound as he watches the shadow come closer, watches the black eyes fixate on him, the mouth smile widely with its long fangs. The figure comes still closer. He feels the mattress compress under the weight of the vampire’s hands and knees as the long body straddles him, the pale face with its terrifying features now very close to his, the long fingers encircling both of his arms,

“. _..miss me?”_

\--------------------------------------

The scream tears into Mitchell’s mind, opening up the very worst of his memories, and yanking him out of the deepest sleep he had experienced in months.

Anders is screaming. His hands grasp outward, clutching at the air, his blue eyes wide open.

Mitchell leaps up, turning towards the blond with every nerve electrified, eyes shooting around the room but finding no threat. His hands reach out to sooth Anders--but that only seems to worsen matters.

“Anders! It’s all right! There’s nothing there, you’re dreaming!”

But the god flinches from his touch and struggles against him, crying out unintelligible syllables, still terrified, staring right at him.

Finally understanding, Mitchell reaches over and quickly flips on the light. He cups Anders face with his hands.

“Anders look at me! It’s me, it’s Mitchell! Look!”

Anders eyes squeeze shut at first from the sudden brightness of the light, but blinking open he finally seems to waken, to take in the features of Mitchell’s face. The wide hazel eyes are not black with malice but shining with concern, his mouth is not fanged and snarling but human, and softly speaking his name, _Anders...it was a nightmare...just a nightmare..._

“Aw shit.” says Anders, closing his eyes, his head falling forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to FiliKiliThorinforever; I did not expect this to get so long! My goals and destination for it are still the same. I promise to deposit these two back in New Zealand more or less intact, with some things worked out and said. It's just taking me longer than I thought it would.
> 
> Thank everyone so much for reading thus far and for your kind kudos and comments. They help me so much.
> 
> And what happened to Almighty Johnsons on Syfy? Isn't there at least one more season???


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluffy Anders/Mitchell times, sledding, until....

They both sag downward, breathing as hard as though they’d just run a mile. When Anders finally looks up he sees Mitchell slowly shaking his head.

“Mitchell--”

“I should go.”

“ _No!”_ Bragi and Anders speak this together. Mitchell’s eyes widen, then narrow. Anders is as surprised as he is. The blond reaches for Mitchell’s forearms and keeps his touch light.

“Please don’t go.”

“You’re afraid of me.”

“No, no I’m not.”

“You dreamed I vamped out and attacked you again didn’t you?”

“Yes, but--”

“You should go back to New Zealand. You’d be safer, and your dreams wouldn’t be so …”

“Mitchell I’ve been having this same dream for months.”

Mitchell stares at him.

“And when I’ve woken from it all I’ve had up until now is an empty bed and a cold bottle of vodka for comfort. This, “ he gestures to the space between himself and Mitchell, “is way better.”

Mitchell can feel the waning alcohol in his body giving over to the first symptoms of a nice hangover. A dull pain throbs behind his eyes.

They are quiet for a moment. Finally Anders speaks again.

“I don’t really know any other way to go about things other than to just go charging in. ”

Mitchell smiles. _That is certainly true._

“I came here because I missed you, because I wanted you back, because I thought enough time had gone by and I was over it, that you were over it, that we could put this thing that happened behind us and be done with it.”Anders sighs. “And then I wake up in the middle of the night screaming like a little girl.”

“Don’t feel too bad. I’ve been waking my housemates out of their sleep for weeks.” Mitchell thinks of George then, his mind going back to the evening before, to his friend’s words that have taken up a comforting litany in his head since he heard them,.. _you could have killed him, but you stopped._ _You were drugged out of your mind and you still stopped..._

Mitchell thinks it would not be appropriate or kind of him to mention that in the ‘screaming like a little girl’ department, George definitely has them both beat.

Their foreheads fall together. “Quite a pair, the two of us.” Mitchell whispers.

He feels Anders hands on his head, pulling him to face him so their eyes regard each other. The moonlight offers no color to the kiwi’s eyes but Mitchell can see them sparkling with determination nonetheless.

“The only way I’m getting on a plane back to New Zealand is if you’re sitting next to me.”

\---------------------------------------------------------  
Anders wakes the next morning feeling a weight behind his eyes. It’s a familiar feeling from his long experience of vodka filled evenings. All is too loud, too bright, his mouth is too dry and the sheets feel like sandpaper.

Mitchell sits propped up on pillows next to him, the TV remote in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. On the glowing TV before them, Cary Grant and David Niven argue in a beautifully appointed office over the best use for an Angel at Christmas time. Anders is grateful the volume is turned low and the curtains are drawn. He pushes himself to a sitting position with his arms, groaning deeply.

“Morning sunshine.”

“There’s no need to shout.”

Mitchell smiles and pushes two aspirins into his hand. Anders accepts them and drinks willingly from the water bottle.

“I got some coffee going. Want some?”

“Yeah, god thanks.” Mitchell bounces off the bed to fill a cup from the small percolator on the corner table of their room. Anders watches him with a twist to his mouth, one arm clutched over his own sensitive stomach.

“Where do you get off being so chipper?”

“‘Been doing this a bit longer than you have, love.” He places a warm cup of coffee with cream in it into Anders’ hands, who accepts it and drinks the hot liquid into his throat, feeling it go down into his chest, the caffeine tingling its way soothingly into his oversensitive head. He leans into Mitchell who draws his arm around him as they turn their attention to the TV screen.

“Cary Grant can fix anything.”

“mmm.”

“Wasn’t he like the biggest star of the silver screen ever?”

“He was actually the second greatest male film star of all time, according to the American film institute, after Humphrey Bogart.”

“What, did you have a thing for Boggie? ‘Knock over more than just a chair on that set….?”

“No, no...it’s true! Look it up.”

Some time passes.

“Loretta Young _does_ look better in that awful hat than that older lady.”

“There is no way that was really Cary Grant doing those fancy tricks on those skates.”

“Nah, definitely a stunt double.”

“Hey...is there a skating rink in Bristol?”

Mitchell winces a bit. Anders sees it. “Don’t fancy a few laps around a rink?”

“Not really.”

“What about sledding?” Anders swallows down the last of the coffee. “Is there a big hill we could go toboggan down at breakneck speed?”

Mitchell considers. He and his siblings used to fly down the snowy hill behind the old Mill house. It’s actually a fond memory.

He doesn’t think they’d be at any more risk on a hill full of people on sleds than they would be in the crowded holiday streets. In fact, it being Christmas eve day, he suspects the vampires will be after human prey in town. He doesn’t know of any of his brethren being too game to seek prey moving at high speed down snowy hills.

“That might be fun.”

More time passes.

“So if I have this story right, Julia can’t have Dudley because Dudley is basically a supernatural, right?”

“Yeah,” Mitchell gets up to finish off the coffee. “God keeps his angels in line, I guess.” He looks back at Anders who sits with his knees drawn up under his chin, his large eyes reflecting the television light, one hand tracing circles on the indentation in the sheets Mitchell had just vacated.

Did they really _have_ to go out today?

Anders catches him staring and one side of his mouth curls up.

They seem fated to miss the endings of classic movies this week.

____________________________________  
Of course they do go out.

George calls Anders’ mobile just as they are getting dressed and invites them over for Christmas eve dinner, assuring them they needn’t bring him any gifts, although warning them that Annie has wrapped gifts for all of them and spent much time accenting said packages with ribbons, bows and other silvery frilly things and that he, George, has no idea what might be in them but that it might not be a bad idea to get her something nice (even though she is insisting none of them need get her anything in return) because you know how women are about that sort of thing…

They decide that a new DVD player would serve well as a gift to both of them, and find one in a store that also sells DVD’s of classic movies. They even find a DVD set of “Pride and Prejudice,” the one with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, for Annie. Mitchell is fairly sure he has heard her mention it before and does not think he has seen it in the house anywhere. In fear that she might break it out and make them all watch it with her tonight, they search for an alternative and pick out “North by Northwest.”

“Not exactly a holiday flick.”

“Hitchcock rocks. And it has a happy ending AND Cary Grant. She’ll love it.”

They ask the shopkeeper to wrap all of it and have it delivered to the pink house so it will arrive before they do, and then go to find a place where they can purchase ...toboggans?

They aren’t even sure where to look. When they ask the shopkeeper of one touristy store where all they find are flimsy plastic sleds that don’t even look solid enough to support a child, he tells them to try a small hardware store down the street from him where a friend of his has a woodworking hobby.

When they take his advice they find the shop tucked onto the end of the long street. A blue and white striped awning hangs over a glass storefront window that holds a display of fake christmas trees decorated with various tools wrapped in red ribbons amongst twinkling white lights. The door to the shop is, of course, wooden and beautifully made, and when they walk in it collides with a bell that tinkles musically. The warmth of the place is welcome, and the comforting scent of denim and rusted metal with a touch of fertilizer and varnish fills their senses as they progress into the neatly appointed aisles.

A young boy, tall and willowy with a tangle of red hair and heavily freckled skin stands behind the counter finishing with a customer who appears to be purchasing multiple sets of christmas lights. He turns to them brightly when he has finished.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

“Yeah, we’re looking for sleds, actually, and we were told you might have some here that would be a bit sturdier than the plastic ones we’ve seen…?”

The boy smiles broadly in understanding. “Oh yeah! Totally get you. ‘Been down the hills with that flimsy shit and it just doesn’t do it, yeah?”

Mitchell smiles at hearing his home accent delivered back to him so authentically.

“Me boss can help you better than I. ‘take you to ‘im. Back this way, gents.”

He leads them back into the store, past aisles filled with routers, power sanders, belt sanders, band saws, planers, table saws, drill presses, radial arm saws, chop saws, and boxes and boxes of different sized screws, nails, washers, winged nuts….

The back room of the store is a woodworker’s paradise. Over a hundred Individual tools, some of which look handmade and quite ancient, hang on an enormous peg board set with hooks. Two solid worktables stand in the space with various unfinished projects perched on them. The whirring noise of a band saw comes from the corner where a grizzled looking form in a plaid shirt and paint spattered work trousers is bent over a task.

The man turns to them as they walk in.

“‘Ello, Burt, who’ve you brung me now?”

“‘Ese two chaps is wantin’ some sturdy sleds from ya, Duff. They’s sayin’ they’d rather not go with plastic. Sounded like folks you’d be appreciating, yeah?”

The old man’s smile is like sunshine and reaches all up to the crinkles around his grey eyes and down his weathered face. He stretches his hand out to Mitchell and Dean and nods to them both as he removes his pipe from between his teeth and warmly introduces himself.

“Duncan McCaig, but me friends call me Duff.”

Burt returns to mind the store as Duff leads them into a back corner where a stunning collection of apparently handmade wooden sleds, what Mitchell remembers as classic flexible flyers, stand against the wall in a splendid row.

Mitchell reaches out to touch one that actually has “Rosebud” painted across the top of the wooden runner guide. “Just like Citizen Kane, then?” he says, grinning.  
Duff smiles, “Yeh. Had to make one like that ‘o course. Never really cared for the movie meeself. Such a mess of shadows and close-ups could barely make out the plot. But people do seem attracted to the sleds more if I paint that on ‘em.”

“So people aren’t buying these, then?” asks Anders, always the PR man.

“Nah.” Says Duff. “Parents are the market for sleds, mostly, and they’re more inclined to go for t’ cheaper plastic. Cahn’ blame em really. Got a nephew who married with kids lives up in London and he’s a lovely boy, visits me often, tells me how hard it is to mek a livin’ now days….”

Duff looks at them appreciatively, “But it is a fine thing to see t’young lads like yerself with some eye for good woodwork and quality. You be lookin for sleds for yerselves then?”

They enjoy conversing with the old Scot so much that they almost forget their errand. If Duff comprehends their relationship, he does not seem to show any discomfort of it, and is of a generation and an age that has all the time in the world not only to talk but to listen. He seems to take a particular interest in Mitchell, who in reality is chronologically older than Duff, and shares the old man’s memory of a simpler time when no merchandise was plastic and all games were analog.

They finally leave the store with two beautifully handmade flexible flyers, in addition to directions to the nearest and best sledding hill near the public cemetery, and a promise from Burt that he will see them there later with his own younger sister. They are planning an afternoon of sledding fun, too.

\--------------------------------------  
Mitchell and Anders have both fallen back into their childhoods. They eagerly pull their sleds (which Duff advised wisely that they fit up with ropes for hauling purposes) to the top of a colossal hill heavily peppered with parents and children and several herds of teenagers doing the same. Once at the top, they flop belly-down onto their purchases, grasp the front runner guides and glance at each other challengingly. Someone has tied a bright red flag to one of the spruce trees near the bottom. It is the unspoken finish line. They push off…

Mitchell wins the first race. The afternoon’s agenda is set.

Burt and his sister arrive (her name is Vivian and she has gorgeous red curls and is about 9 years old and completely trusting) and the races become even more interesting. Small children the two don’t know fling themselves onto their sleds and demand to be hauled to the top. Horrified parents apologize and protest their children’s selfishness but Anders and Mitchell laugh and say it’s all right, let the children be, they don’t mind. So it becomes a great multi-generational race to both the top and the bottom of the hill and the time rolls by quickly, and the memories that flow into Mitchell’s mind are thick and sweet and fill him with the feels and images of his brothers and sisters in Ireland, of snowy hills that became smooth and iced as sled runners coursed down it, of knitted gloves and scarves that became water-logged with cold and wet but stay warm with adrenalin, and of human squeals and shouts that come from joyous excitement and not from fear or horror…

Finally Mitchell cannot ignore that his fingers are painfully frozen. Anders is laughing so hard against him that he is leaning on Mitchell as though drunk. _What did you think would happen if you went sledding in those ridiculous fingerless gloves?_

Mitchell excuses himself from the throng and finds a public bathroom at the bottom of the hill that is meant to service visitors of the cemetery.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Mitchell turns on the water and cups his hands, rinsing his face and thawing his fingers with the warm water. He has long since learned to ignore bathroom mirrors, and when he sees no reflection in front of him he assumes he is alone, until something tingles down inside him, something very old, but very familiar...

His reflex is a moment too late. He sees the bathroom stall door behind him bang open in the mirror with no one there behind it, and then the grip on his arms is there, the familiar scent of cologne and sawdust from the funeral parlor. Every fiber of him recognizes his sire is behind him blocking him, but his mind feels more frozen than his body. He knows the feel of Herrick’s blond beard scraping against his cheek, the feel of his fingers pulling his hair away from his ear, and he can feel his triumphant smile even though he can’t see it.

“Let go of me, Herrick...”

“Now, now, easy boy. Just wanted to talk with you a moment.”

“There’s nothing to talk about...I won’t be your puppet anymore!”

“Oh Mitchell, is that what you’ve been telling yourself?”

Mitchell closes his eyes, suppressing a groan as a horrible nausea hits him. It feels like he’s a novice again writhing in his sire’s clutches for the first time. He cannot be this weak. It cannot be possible…

“Surely your memory tells you otherwise? We were a TEAM Mitchell don’t you remember?”

Mitchell shakes his head. No no no…

Herrick’s voice trickles into his ear like hot pitch. “Don’t you remember what a talented killer you are? You were one of the few younglings I ever mentored that I never had to watch. You killed so clinically and so cleanly we barely needed to send in a cleanup crew. And you had style, oh yes!”

Mitchell does groan now. He can’t understand why he can’t break away. Herrick is barely holding him.

“It was as if your victims wanted you to kill them. “

Mitchell tries to swallow but can’t seem to find any saliva.

“My goodness I tried to learn that secret from you for years, tried to copy your moves, darling. What an artist! And the new young ones look up to you so much and are in need of your guidance. Don’t you think you owe that to your own kind? If you really do care about humanity so much don’t you think you could do them more good on the inside with us, protecting them from those of us who are are bit, well, exuberant??”

The same old lines, the same old poison...Mitchell trembles now,not sure if it is more from rage or from fear.

“Now you’ve had your fling with your little blond god, I do admit he is a nice looking morsel but you know very well it’s only a matter of time before your true nature returns and you make a meal out of him as you have of so many others. Wouldn’t it be kinder to put him out of his misery quickly instead of stringing him along like this? I have spoken to you before about playing with your food...”

Mitchell’s eyes finally go black at this.

“ _If you harm him_ ,” he hisses, his voice echoing around the hard tiled walls of the small room, “ _I will find you and rip your intestines out before you even know I’m there…”_

Herrick looks at him almost rapturously, his eyes shining with a hint of madness, “There’s my boy…” he whispers, and Mitchell shivers. Then Herrick’s voice seems to return to business, “Yes, I was afraid you might say something like that.”

Mitchell feels a sharp stab of pain in his right thigh, followed by a tingling sensation of fluids entering the muscle.

Mitchell roars from deep in his throat and finally fights with his full strength against his sire, pushing Herrick back hard against the tiled wall. But the old vampire simply laughs, waggling the empty syringe tauntingly between his thumb and index finger, and as Mitchell propels himself out of the door he hears Herrick calling after him lightly, gaily, as though they had just had tea,

“See you later then, Mitchell!”

Already Mitchell can feel his vision tunneling, feel the sunlight burning his eyes and skin more than it had before, feel himself, _himself,_ receding and something else oozing and forcing its way to occupy his arms to the fingertips and down his legs which stumble under him in the confusion of receiving conflicting orders.

But he hangs on. He hangs on to the thoughts he knows are his own, in his own mind, in his own heart…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Great thanks to FiliKiliThorinForever for having me keep Herrick alive through this story; it is working out SOOOO much better with him here.... He's just such a wonderful villain.
> 
> Still keeping my promise for a happy ending. 
> 
> Comments are so welcome and appreciated! Thank you so much for continuing to read.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More intensity here for Anders and Mitchell. 
> 
> warning: minor character implied death. A vampire coven on Christmas eve is not a nice place.

Anders notices that Mitchell is taking longer to return to the sledding hill than he should be, and has wandered down towards the comfort station buildings. When he sees the brunet he doesn’t think it’s Mitchell at first. The dark haired man staggering uphill towards him, gripping each tree on his way looks like he might be drunk. But when he finally comes near enough to see him properly Anders’ stomach drops at the palor of his friend’s face and blind fear in his eyes. Mitchell grabs at the front of Anders’ coat and hisses desperately.

“ _Anders, run!”_

“Mitchell?! What happened?”

“Herrick is here...just drugged me again…” the brunet’s eyes turn from hazel to black, then back to hazel again. Anders blanches.

“There’ll be more of them, all around us...You have to get away, get in a taxi, go straight to the airport…”

“Mitchell I can’t leave you here, they’ll get you, they’ll--”

“They won’t hurt me, Anders, _but if they get you they’ll have leverage!!!”_

Anders feels sick. _They won’t hurt him_? Of course they will. In the worst way Mitchell _can_ be hurt...

He suddenly wonders which of the innocuous looking people around them are human and which are not, and begins to weigh his chances of making it to a public street and hailing a taxi.

Mitchell grips him by the arms. “Call George and Annie, let them know what’s happened. Go quickly. When you get to the airport take the first plane out, it doesn’t matter where it’s going. You can connect to a New Zealand flight later.”

“Come with me--”

“Too dangerous. Better chance for you if we separate.”

“But--”

“ _Please don’t argue!!!_ ” Mitchell’s eyes are huge and red rimmed and sweat has broken out on his face and trickles in lines from under his black curls as his grip on Anders becomes so fierce it hurts. “They’ll make me hurt you and I can’t bear that again! _just go! go!_ ”

\--------------------------------------------------------  
Mitchell watches Anders make his way towards the north end of the parking lot, nods to himself as he sees the blond disappear into a crowd of parents and children making their way towards a taxi stand.

Then the brunet turns away and heads in the exact opposite direction.

He isn’t certain how he makes it through the parked cars to a bus stop at the south end of the lot. The world seems to have turned into a series of snapshots. The steel grey sky threatens above a jagged row of trees, then the gaudy red of a four door sedan bumps his hip and the too bright reflection off its rear view mirror hurts his eyes, then he views his own hands pressing against the dirty snow on the ground as he pushes himself back to his feet. He keeps stumbling and finding himself leaning against cars, then he pulls himself up and takes a few more steps forward, only to fall against the next car. He is vaguely aware of people staring at him, and he doesn’t care. If he makes a spectacle of himself all the better. Let the attention fall this way, let the vampires come towards him and away from Anders.

The earth seems to sway under him, and dark memories intrude. He remembers hunting in parking lots like this one with Ivan, lots in the cities, near office buildings. They would wait for the loners late at night, the workaholics leaving work after a long day, groggy and tired, fumbling with their keys. Easy prey. He remembers those kills now, warm bodies struggling under him, pressed down into pebbled asphalt, the smell of petrol and motor oil mingling with the intoxication of feeding. A fire courses through him, the old burning hunger. He has not felt it this intensely in ages. _It would be so good, so good to feed right now._

He makes it to a metal bench near the bus stop but not too near the crowd of children and families waiting there. He clutches the bench until his knuckles turn white and hangs on as the world spins.

A little girl with red hair approaches him dragging a wooden sled, a tall skinny boy behind her. He feels that he should know them...she speaks to him, something about forgetting his sled on the hill...her skin is so fresh and young enough for him to see the tiny blood vessels under the surface, to smell the coppery scent of warm blood flowing beneath the golden red curls that escape from the folds of her striped scarf…

It happens so quickly. Vivian’s eyes widen and she screams as the man’s eyes go black, _black!_ and he lunges at her, the man who was so happy and nice to her on the hill, who had pulled her up the whole hill on his sled about a dozen times and all the other kids too…

Mitchell remembers Vivian then, and her brother Burt, Burt from the hardware store, whose baby sister he has nearly attacked just now this moment, and he hauls himself back in horror and clings to the metal bench, panting and sweating, dimly aware of a crowd forming around him, of many hushed voices, and a flicker of blue lights coming closer with an accompanied brief tweet of siren…

Hands grasp his shoulders. “Not to worry, everyone, not to worry, that is the way it goes with these heroine addicts. We’ll take care of him from here, yes, just give us some room, please. Hello again Mitchell, need a lift back to the clinic, dear?”

Herrick. And Seth. They are handcuffing him and dragging him to a police car.

There are others, too, that he vaguely recognizes, but his vision finally tunnels into the police car interior. They push his head down and slide him into the back seat. His body is still fighting, rigid, his hands straining the cuffs, his feet pressing against the floor of the car. He feels dizzy, sick, unable to speak, knowing the demon is slowly winning. Herrick sits on one side of him, and someone very large is on his other side but Mitchell doesn’t know who. He is fairly sure Seth is driving. He is fairly sure he is totally screwed.

Herrick’s hand turns Mitchell’s head towards him, the coven leader noting the eyes wild with whites showing all around, the curls now soaked with sweat, the breaths deep and ragged,

“For goodness sake, Mitchell, why all the hystrionics? We’re just bringing you home is all.”

“How long?” he chokes out, “How long have you been following me?”

“Oh Mitchell, you wound me really. I respect your privacy but you know very well I always know where you are.” This last is spoken deadly soft and drives a chill into Mitchell’s spine. But the light tone returns quickly.

“You see there’s a party at the parlor tonight that everyone’s been looking forward to for ages and we’ve been planning it for awhile actually and thought you’d be happy we wanted to include you. It’s just inconvenient your little blond friend showed up after we’d already printed all the invitations. But no worries, we’ve managed to make room for him.” Herrick smiles genially.

Mitchell’s voice is barely audible as he says the words, the ones to which he already knows the response but that he must say anyway,

“You have me. Let him go. Leave him alone.”

“Oh, but we can’t have you be lonely on Christmas Eve!” the coven leader pats Mitchell firmly on the knee, “What kind of sire would I be if I didn’t acknowledge this great love affair you are having Mitchell?”

But Herrick’s eyes gleam and spin at him with a coldness and insane joy that paralyzes Mitchell and freezes his heart. He doesn’t ever remember being this scared or feeling this helpless, and he falls fast, out of control, blanking out into an abyss of icy oblivion.

\--------------------------------------------------  
“They’ve got him, George! They’ve got Mitchell!”

“What? Who? Who’s got Mitchell?”

“The vampires.” Anders tries to keep his voice calm, but his heart is racing. In fact he wishes the cab he is riding in could match the speed of his heart. As it is they weave through town agonizingly slowly due to the holiday traffic, trying to reach the airport. He has tried to follow Mitchell’s instructions. He’d kept a low profile, walked quickly but did not run, shoved a knit cap over his blond curls, took off his coat and shoved his hands into his pockets, ducking his head low. Now in the cab he speaks fast into his mobile, astounded he made it into a cab at all, having seen the commotion of police cars at the other end of the lot and knowing with sickening certainty what it meant.

He gives George all the information he can. George tells him he is doing the right thing and that he and Annie will find a way to rescue Mitchell. Anders gut twists as it did when Mitchell had told him the same thing...now that his fear has subsided a bit he can’t abide it. He can’t head off to safety and leave them all with Mitchell in this mess... No, no he has to stay and help. But George talks him down. No, Mitchell is right. The worst thing they can do to hurt Mitchell is to hurt Anders, and that is what they will do if they catch him. They will find a solution more easily with Anders out of harm’s way.

But just as he resigns himself, Anders sees a flicker of blue lights reflecting in the snowdrifts by the side of the road.

\-----------------------------------------------  
Mitchell awakens to find himself pressed down into a cushioned armchair and clutches the torn leather on the armrests. Rhythmic music, heavy on bass, pounds in the room and young voices weave through the sound, happy, inebriated, trusting…

His vision and hearing are foggy as though he were under water. The weight and pressure of young knees touches his sides and a bare midriff comes into view, belly button set with a silver ring, the tattoo of a butterfly painted against the trim but soft skin of the girl who straddles him. She sinks into his lap. Now her face is level with his. Her hair is dyed bright orange with black ends that carve around her neck.

God...she can’t be more than 16.

Her small hands touch his pale damp face and shivering body and she frowns, “What’s his trouble? E’ looks like my cousin does when E’ needs a fix. Don’t he need some jack then or somethin’?”

Herrick laughs from behind the girl, pushing her closer to Mitchell who in turn is pulling as far back into the chair as the leather upholstery will allow, “No worries, love. You show him a nice time and he’ll be getting his fix all right.”

“Well, you’re a pretty one anyhow…” says the girl shyly, smiling a little as her fingers tentatively caress his shoulders and tug at the buttons of his shirt. Her warm skin comes close to him and thrums with her human pulse and she smells of cinnamon and when her mouth curves round to nibble his ear Mitchell’s nose and lips fall into the length of her neck and the battle is as good as lost. He sits upright, his hands reach to pull her close to him, claiming her ass and grinding her down onto him with a deep growl. She gasps at the change in him, moaning at the feel of his mouth roughly exploring her neck, and his hands that are suddenly everywhere, cupping and squeezing as though checking for ripeness.

_And then there is no more music, there is no more party, there is not even the armchair under him. There is only the girl, and the thin layer of plump skin that gives easily as his teeth puncture it, and warm rich coppery life flows into Mitchell in gulping mouthfuls._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger. 
> 
> The rest of this is already close to being finished so it will not take me long to update.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Showdown.
> 
> If you haven't read "A Poison in My Veins" by FiliKiliThorinForever, you should know that this fic is built upon that one and would not be possible without it.

They haven’t harmed Anders overly much, other than a bit of rough handling and cuffing his hands in front of him. He doesn’t recognize the vampires who capture him, stopping his cab on a lonely portion of highway leading to the airport. A huge man, and a dark haired woman who eyes him hungrily. If their intention is to frighten him they succeed. The female grips him hard and forces him to watch, her fangs grazing against the skin of his neck, as the male attacks the driver and drinks him dry. But she doesn’t harm Anders. Fortunately for him the two appear to be under strict orders directly from Herrick, something they continuously, almost nervously mention to each other, and they are quite determined. He tries to use Bragi to outsmart them and slip away at one point as they are nearing the police car...he doubts once inside that he will stand any kind of a chance. But vampire speed and strength outdo him and all he achieves are some bruises to his body and a swollen lip.

By the time they arrive at the funeral parlor his adrenalin is pumping so hard that his body is ice cold and permanently trembling. The place looks ironically festive. He’s pulled inside and into a corridor, he’s only dimly aware of his cuffs being removed, _where would go now, really?_ and then he is surrounded by a crush of bodies, some vampire, some human, young runaways and transients by the look of them, drinks and cigarettes in their hands, laughter on their lips, pupils dilated from alcohol and what looks to be a hefty supply of cocaine in lines on multiple surfaces…

 

And then Herrick is in front of him. Anders has never met Mitchell’s sire, but the vampire before him looks every bit the Machiavellian prince his friend always described. His guts clench as Herrick smiles a predator’s smile and curls an arm through his, patting Anders’ hand and pulling him along beside him as though to invite him for a pleasant stroll in the park.

“So good to finally meet you, Anders Johnson! I’ve been so looking forward to this I simply can’t tell you. And welcome to our humble abode, shall I show you around?”

As if he had a choice.

Anders has to struggle to keep his feet as the coven leader guides him past several groups of people, people that Anders clearly and correctly sees not as holiday revelers but as vampires and their innocent very near-future victims.

And then Anders catches a glimpse through a doorway, a red-headed girl gyrating in someone’s lap, and the hands that grasp at her back...he knows those silver rings…

Herrick angles him so Anders has a full view of the events that follow. As Mitchell breaks and begins to feed, the other vampires in the room capitulate one by one into their human guests, until the energy of the room topples into demonic predation and strangled, confused fear.

Herrick reaches forward blithely to close the door and knocks on it, signaling to a lanky young vampire nearby. The younger vampire moves to stand in front of the door and crosses his arms with authority.

“That room went a bit earlier than planned but we expected that didn’t we Jerry? Keep an eye on John won’t you?”

“Jerry” nods, and Herrick walks Anders further down the hall. The tremble in Anders’ body is getting worse and as the metallic scent of blood hits him and he thinks of Mitchell in that room…

“So you should know that you have quite excellent taste in vampires, Mr. Anders. Mitchell is one of our greatest, you know and he doesn’t hook up with just anyone. He’s broken many a heart amongst our own number, rejected some quite attractive vampires, in fact I can’t remember the last time--Oh dear, are you quite well?”

Anders finally succumbs to the bile in his throat and his body convulses and he heaves the remains of his lunch onto the floor as Herrick holds him half upright. He loses awareness over the next few minutes, until he slowly comes back around. The pounding bass from the party is distant, now, and he sits in a hard backed chair in a room lined with bookshelves. His mouth and throat burn and his head spins so fast that he shuts his eyes again and dreads reopening them. Cold, firm fingers grasp his jaw.

He feels the rim of a cup against his mouth and panics, remembering, _it all starts with a drink…_

“No, no, no, don’t be like that. We wouldn’t waste any drugs on you, don’t flatter yourself.”

The grip on him tightens though, and Anders knows again he has no choices here. So he drinks.

Orange juice.

“There! much better now, eh? Have a few biscuits as well.”

He forces his lids open, looks Herrick in the eye, and begins to eat and drink mechanically. He wonders when it will happen. How it will feel. Will Herrick be quick, or will he draw it out, making Anders suffer? He keeps his eyes on Herrick as the vampire babbles on, hoping he doesn’t look as scared as he feels.

“...So you _do_ make me very curious, Mr. Anders. What is it that has my John so fascinated with you? I have to tell you looking at you now I just don’t see anything that earth shattering to be honest. I mean you are a nice looking enough chap but Mitchell’s encountered better in his long life, and you have such a _hold_ on him...I wonder…”

Abruptly Herrick reaches out and seizes Anders’ wrist. Anders jumps in his chair and Herrick smiles toothily at him, pleased by his fear, feeding off of it, and the blond curses himself and tries to regain his composure.

“No worries, dear, just want a little taste.” Herrick rolls up Anders’ sleeve and before he can even react the vampire has used one of his own sharpened fingernails to make a cut in his skin, and has dragged Anders’ wrist to his mouth.

Herrick pulls on Anders’ blood as though it were a well rolled joint. He only takes a small amount and then tips his head back to savor the taste. After a moment he nods, folding his arms across his chest and looking ominously at Anders from under dark brows.

“Hmm, most curious.” And suddenly Herrick’s eyes turn ebony black and Anders sees fangs and clawed hands coming at him--

“ _NO!_ ” He and Bragi speak together.

His heart is beating so fast again that it takes him a minute to realize that Herrick is laughing, helplessly.

“Oh my dear is that all you’ve got? How on earth did you survive the last time?”

And Herrick pulls him up, guiding him out of the room and down another hallway to a lonely metal door that creaks heavily as Herrick opens it.

“Well I’m afraid you won’t survive this time if I know Mitchell. It’s been simply charming to meet you, darling. I promise to send your ashes back to New Zealand, it’s the least I can do for all the entertainment you’ve provided me tonight!”

And he’s shoved into the room, alone, hearing it lock behind him as Herrick’s laughter drifts away.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is no furniture in this room, and it’s cold. Anders sits with his legs drawn up, his head in his hands.

So tonight the role of Anders’ killer will be played by John Mitchell.

He breathes in, out, feeding his brain cells. _How on earth did you survive the last time?_

How indeed.

He won’t go down without a fight, and he knows well that Mitchell will beat him if it comes to brute strength. So he has to figure out another way.

Maybe there is a way. Maybe Anders knows Mitchell better than Herrick does. Maybe Anders won’t screw up this time. He’d best not, because Yggdrasil is on the other side of the world.

\------------------------------------------------------------

The heavy metallic door opens and Mitchell steps inside. Anders rises to his feet. Herrick stands behind Mitchell, his hand resting on the Irishman’s shoulder, whispering something into the taller man’s ear. But Anders can’t take his eyes off Mitchell.

He’d always thought Mitchell handsome, but the man who stands before him now takes his breath away. There is a luster to him he has never seen before. The dark circles under his eyes are gone, replaced with smooth skin that looks fresh as a child’s, color deepening over the cheekbones, mouth resting full and poised above the uncompromising chin. Mitchell’s hair looks thicker and blacker than he’s ever seen it, and even his eyelashes blink more densely over the deep brown eyes that radiate an intensity he knows should terrify him, but that fascinates him instead. His entire stance is purely predatory. It sends a pulse down Anders’ spine as he cannot help appreciating the spectacle, having played that role himself often enough.

But he gulps knowingly at his own naivete. In terms of predators he is way out of his league with the century old creature that stands before him.

But he makes the decision then and there, that he will not be easy prey tonight. In fact he will not be prey, at all.

Herrick pats the Irishman on the arm, smiling maniacally at Anders as he slowly closes the door behind Mitchell. The bolt slides loudly into place on the other side. “Merry Christmas, John,” comes Herrick’s voice hollowly through the steel, “Do enjoy yourself!”

They are alone.

Anders still stands firm in the center of the room, arms at his sides, not breaking eye contact with the vampire. Deep in his coat pocket he feels something cold, and slides his fingers around it; Bragi’s cup, George and Annie’s gift…

Bragi bubbles inside him, settles himself warmly into Anders’ mind, and waits.

The vampire takes a step forward, “ _Scared?”_ The voice is dark and rasps against Anders’ senses like chipped ice.

Anders and Bragi answer together, stepping forward but angled, as the god and the vampire slowly begin to circle each other. “No.”

“ _Liar.”_

Anders/Bragi speaks again. “I wanted to ask you something.”

_“By all means. Let’s take our time.”_

“Did you intend to kill me the last time?”

The vampire’s eyes blacken. His jaw muscles clench.

 _“Aren’t you more concerned with my intentions for tonight?_ ” The fangs drop.

“Because if that was your intention you fucked it up didn’t you?”

The fanged mouth smiles broadly, and the beauty Anders had seen in the vampire before has changed into something vile with the knowledge of the particular hunger that feeds those teeth and the tongue that flicks at them obscenely.

_“Playin’ with fire, aren’t you mate?”_

“You didn’t kill me. You couldn’t, because Mitchell stopped you.”

Anders body slams into the wall as though a freight train hit him. The vampire presses him there with his full body, one hand at his throat. He’d forgotten how fast Mitchell could move…Anders closes his eyes and swallows, fighting the tremors he feels begin in his stomach. If fear takes him, he’s lost.

“. _..and who’s going to stop me now?”_ The hand begins to squeeze.

Anders/Bragi throw all they can at the vampire,

_“BACK OFF!”_

The weight is suddenly gone. Anders pulls away from the wall and moves towards a vertical support near the room’s center, and lightly rests a hand there, catching his breath. The creature stands a few feet from him, drawing a wrist across his mouth, squinting at Anders in mild surprise that morphs into amusement. Anders knows Bragi’s voice won’t keep the vampire at bay for long. He will have to do better than this, he has to reach Mitchell somehow, and soon, or he’ll never survive.

“ _That’ll only work once, little god.”_

He reaches for the cup again, but Bragi pushes back at him gently, _no, not quite yet._

He is not sure if it means anything, but he is almost certain that the Irish accent becomes thicker as the vampire becomes angrier. Anders pushes off the support and steals himself to speak again.

“You’re not Mitchell.”

Laughter. Cold and richly self indulgent. _“Oh come, now. Must we go through this again?”_

The vampire steps forward and Anders’ breath catches, because for a moment the fangs disappear, the eyes turn hazel and warm, the head tilts and the stance loosens into the unassuming gentle spirit Anders recognizes.

“ _‘This who yer lookin’ for, love?_ ” the vampire comes closer and Anders heart clenches as the false image of Mitchell, his Mitchell, nears him and traces Ander’s jawline with an elegant index finger and breathes into his ear, “ _Is this the Mitchell you prefer?_ ” The blond shrinks away, trying desperately not to betray himself. If he really wanted to kill him, all the vampire would have to do is keep pushing in this direction until Anders’ broke into easy prey indeed.

But all at once the illusion vanishes, the eyes blink to inky black and the voice and touch go cold with contempt.

“ _This spineless piece of introspective shit who couldn’t find his everlovin’ ass with both hands if the blessed world was comin’ to a fuckin’ end??!!!”_

The vampire stands in front Anders hunched hawk-like, hands fisting at his sides, black eyes pierce him from beneath heavy brows, “T _HIS is the true John Mitchell. You can tell yerself any fairy story ya like but here he is as he was ever meant to be. A vicious, remorseless killer who does what he wants to whoever he wants and thinks not twice about it, and that’s many steps higher on the evolutionary ladder than you humans or even your pathetic little Bragi could ever hope to climb!”_

Anders stands his ground. He feels fear, but he hangs his hopes on the only chance he perceives. If this creature really wanted to kill him, Anders would already be dead. Mitchell must be in there somewhere…Last time he’d gone in blind, tried to talk to Mitchell before dealing with this monster. This time things are different. He’ll talk to the monster first.

Bragi fills him strongly. The god seems to be taking a keen interest in this confrontation, as the survival of his vessel hangs so much in the balance…

“Sounds like you’ve got Herrick’s rhetoric well memorized. He’s got you well trained, then.”

_“Still playin’ with fire…”_

“When was the last time you went after a victim of your own choosing?”

“ _I choose my own victims…”_

“That orange haired girl in there, did you choose her?”

“…”

“You are Herrick’s puppet.”

_“You really do want to die painfully don’t you?”_

“So you’ll kill me as well, as Herrick ordered you to?”

_“I’m going to enjoy killing you Anders Johnson…”_

“You’re a good soldier, you follow orders well...” _His accent’s getting thicker,_ thinks Anders.

_“I’ll start by ripping off those ridiculous dimples…”_

“But you’re not going to kill me.”

“ _Pop those stupid blue eyes out of your face, one by one…” almost a bar room brogue now..._

“You’re an infection. You can’t even exist unless Mitchell is severely pushed or drugged.”

“ _...rip that golden tongue out by its roots…that’d put an end to your arguments...”_

“You won’t kill me, because Mitchell is stronger than you are.”

Anders’ back is against the wall again and this time he knows his own death will happen right here, right now, unless…

 _“You insufferable human fuck!”_ The vampire has Anders’ hand held tight in the vice of his fingers and squeezes the metacarpal bones to the breaking point. “ _We are five times stronger than you you fucking dwarf! Shall I show you…?”_

Anders’ eyes stare widely into the the hazel ones. This is the moment. His breath catches and his heart hammers and he waits for the pain...but something flickers. It’s like being in a deep sea diving vessel. Pressure. Intense quiet. And then Anders sees it; that corner of hazel eye that widens, the soft inner part of the eyelid that tightens under the thick black eyebrow…

 _Now.._.he plunges his free hand into his pocket and draws out the cup, managing to raise it up into the Mitchell’s field of view. The vines in pewter turn before them both.

“Remember…?” Anders whispers, holding his breath, hardly daring to hope.

The brown eyes widen and stare at the cup. Slowly, Anders dares to push Mitchell’s hand, the one holding his own, towards the cup. Mitchell only needs a nudge to release Anders’ hand and curl his fingers around it. Mitchell’s shoulder falls against the wall, the expression on his face intense and focused on the cup in his hand as though it might suddenly bite him. Anders brings both of his own hands around Mitchell’s and presses the cool metal of the cup and the memories that it holds into both of them.

Then Anders and Bragi begin to speak.

  
Mostly at first it is Anders who speaks, though he can feel Bragi in his voice and in his mind, giving him ideas, encouragement, lending power to his words. He talks about George and Annie’s dinner, the kitchen that shown with candles and smelled of warm lasagna. Annie and her popcorn tree, and how she kept getting up from the table to fill the cup for Anders, and how her eyes sparkled when she laughed, and how her laugh sounded like a mountain stream. Annie cares about Mitchell, Anders tells him how much it shows in the way she hugged him, and in the way she spoke to him that evening. Anders thinks Annie might lay down her life for Mitchell’s if she still had one to give, and he tells Mitchell that.

And he talks about George, too. The kindness and affability of him, how generous it was of George to research Bragi and find this cup, and how his knowledge of Bragi rivals that of his cousin Olaf, in fact he’d love to introduce George to Olaf some day. Anders recounts the comedy of George tripping over that chair and then how good natured he was about it in the end, acting as Mitchell’s designated driver, and driving them back to their hotel so generously when they were both so pissed. Anders never had anyone do that for him, not even his own brothers ever did that.

Mitchell has slid down the wall and now sits on his knees, Anders right in front of him, the cup still clenched between them. Mitchell’s eyes are closed, his mouth slightly open, shoulders hunched. Anders keeps talking.

“Do you know how much it meant to me to be around people who care about each other as much as the three of you do? I mean you aren’t even related! I never had friends like that, Mitchell. I never even had family like that. And I guess I’m pretty ignorant about friendship, but I don’t think people as high caliber as Annie and George would have come to care about you as much as they do if there wasn’t something high caliber in you to care about.”

A deep growl rumbles from Mitchell’s throat, “ _Sentimental sap!!_ ” his eyes fly open, jet black but staring at nothing, “ _bleeding heart...whining...approval seeking…loser!”_ But Mitchell’s hands still clasp the cup hard as a lifeline, and Anders rises on his knees to take a dominant position slightly above him.

Bragi comes forward even more as Anders addresses his friend Mitchell, not the creature inside him, but _Mitchell_ , “You lived without this thing for 24 years. I know you’re over a century old, but have you forgotten how long a time 24 years is to a child? And that’s what you were then. Those years are more powerful than any other years you’ve lived, Mitchell. I should know.”

Anders gulps a moment, thinking of his own childhood. But Mitchell’s eyes have turned hazel again, and even though they stare glassily past him Anders knows he is listening.

“Your childhood made you, Mitchell. And you had a good one, believe me. You’ve told me enough about it for me to be able to assure you of that.”

Now Bragi steps in, and Anders almost fades into the back of his own mind as he hears himself describing _an Irish childhood at the turn of the century, of mornings spent following behind his father’s plow, the moist turned earth underfoot, siblings beside him, all with their sleeves and pants rolled up, pushing seeds into the furrows...of Sundays sitting on hard wooden pews in the church, his mother hissing at them to settle down, trying not to giggle during the hymn at Mrs. McLaren’s comically high pitched warbling just behind them, then the joy of finally being released into an afternoon of free time with their handmade sleds and no chores to do t’il sundown...and then the quiet evening by the fire, work done, play done, prayers said, and his mother cradling his littlest sister in her arms by the fire, in the rocking chair he’d helped his father make for her last Christmas..._

Bragi fills his mind and Anders suddenly knows things. Suddenly he knows the full lyrics and tunes of ancient Gaelic songs, and of one lullaby so ancient the writer is unknown, but that has been sung by mothers rocking their children to sleep for so long that surely Mitchell will remember it, surely it will penetrate through the fog he sees in the brunet’s eyes.

Anders hears a voice coming out of his own throat that he doesn’t recognize. It’s his, but not his, and sings in fluid Gaelic as though he were born to the language and follows the rhythm of steadily beating drum and the to and fro gentle rocking of rocking chair...

_O bà bà mo leanabh_  
 _Bà mo leanabh bà_  
 _Is chan eil duine chì mo leanabh_  
 _Nach canadh bà bà_

_Nam faiceadh tu Griogal Cridhe_  
 _‘S e na shuidhe air tom,_  
 _Gaol nam feanaibh gràdh nan nighinn_  
 _‘S currac bheag mu cheann_

It is Bragi’s cup falling to the floor between them that startles them both out of their semi hypnosis. Anders looks with startled eyes at Mitchell, who blinks slowly at him, and then suddenly grabs Anders’ arms and gasps, fully awake now, fully Mitchell.

“Anders…!”

“It’s all right, Mitchell, I’m fine.”

Mitchell checks him, swallowing nervously, needing to see for himself that Anders is unharmed, flinching at a bruise he finds on his face. Anders reassures him, that _no, no, one of the other vampires did that, and no, nobody drank from me, but yes, we are in a locked room in a vampire coven, and yes there over a hundred vampires in the rooms around us engaged in a feeding frenzy, and yes I did call George and Annie before I was caught but I’m not sure how they would be able to help us…_

Finally fully updated, Mitchell sags against the wall and sighs raggedly, his hands still clinging to Anders’ coat. Anders sits close to him, his legs now tangled up with Mitchell’s, his gaze fixed on Mitchell’s face, willing his friend to remain, and the vampire to stay buried...

“Anders?”

“Yeah Mitchell?”

“I don’t suppose you could do that trick where you turn into a lion again?”

“You know I had no control over that Mitchell.”

“Sure would come in handy now, though.”

“Yeah,” Anders’ smile is fragile, as fragile as the hope he feels. “It sure would.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lullaby Anders sings is called the "Griogal cridhe" (Gregor's lament) and is actually a popular ancient lullaby that when translated is a historically based story of a mother singing to her child about the execution of her husband Gregor MacGregor by the Campbells in 1570. :( yeah, real soothing content, I know. But the reason I chose it it because of the way it sounded when sung accapela by Jessie MacKenzie on this website:
> 
> http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandssongs/gaelicsongs/griogalcridhe.asp
> 
> Sorry if the link doesn't work; may need copy and paste it in but I promise it's worth it.
> 
> I am revealing my naive belief that John Lennon was right. Love is the answer. And if a demon were fighting for possession of MY soul, and I could hear my Polish grandmother sing to me like this, it might very well pull me back from the edge.
> 
> I am so nervous about how you will all receive this chapter. I am so grateful for those of you who've read this far, and hope you find Anders' success believable.
> 
> Thanks always to FiliKiliThorinForever, and if you're curious about the lion reference at the end, read "In my Silence" which is a much less angsty and happier fic than this one!


	10. Chapter 10

Annie had popped in next to him almost as soon as Anders’ call had come in.

  
“George…? What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  
The werewolf has one finger in his ear and struggles to hear Anders, whose cab is being forced off the road by an unmarked police car…  
He can hear forced courage in Anders’ voice describing the two figures approaching the cab who show no reflection in the rear view mirrors.

  
“Anders, do you have a crucifix on you? a religious symbol? anything?”

  
“no.”

  
“But you have Bragi. Use him, Anders, do you hear me? use him as early as you can. “

  
“right.”

  
“Anders listen to me. Mitchell was drugged before when he attacked you but he didn’t kill you. He was meant to, by all that is logical he should have, but he didn’t. Do you hear me, Anders?? Do you understand me? Remember that. Mitchell didn’t kill you last time he was on this same drug….”

  
“George---” the line goes dead.

  
Annie has seized George by the shirt and is shaking him by this time enough to rattle his teeth. “What’s happening? Is that Anders? Is Mitchell all right? Has someone drugged him? what’s happened George!!!!??”

  
The phone drops to the floor, sounding like a death knell. George and Annie sag down together too, holding on to each other as they have always done in these situations that always seem to befall them. Things had seemed so good, so normal...Christmas Eve, a tree to decorate, a menorah to light, friends coming over for dinner, frivolous presents wrapped with ribbons, Mitchell in love with someone they actually like…

  
But Herrick has timed his attack perfectly. The sky outside is black and starless. They will be out there, surely watching them, expecting Mitchell’s best friends to come to try to help. Sure enough, when George peeks out through the blinds his blood chills to see a police car parked down the street, a small wreath with little red twinkling lights on it poised ironically between its headlights. The two occupants greet the few passers-by in the street with friendly waves, then seem to focus right at their window, and waggle their dark gloved hands at George ominously.

  
It would be folly to even step outside the door.

  
And even if that danger did not exist the barometer on their wall has fallen below 29 millibars of mercury, and they can both hear and feel a very real storm bearing down on them. They huddle on the floor together in this house that is safe, for them, because Mitchell is the only vampire who has ever been invited here, and no enemies of their friend may enter.

  
But outside those enemies blow wild with the wind, surge amongst the tender mortal humans who are all potential prey tonight, and Anders is out there with them, captured now, and Mitchell is in their clutches too after having worked so hard to get away from them, to be better. And he had been. They had seen it. The demon had been good and buried. Their friend had a good heart. Their only worry had been that the Mitchell who survived had become such a sad, young, old man.  
But Anders seemed to be on the verge of bringing him out of that depression. And to have all of that threatened now---

  
“Anders says Herrick attacked Mitchell, drugged him again, and he’s pretty sure they’ve got him.”

  
“What about Anders? He’s going to the airport, right? You told him to go straight there?”

  
“Yes, but then he described a police car coming up behind his cab--”

  
“Just now??”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“So we go! right now, head them off before they can get him to that awful funeral parlor!”

  
“Annie--”

  
“Because once they get Anders there they’ll hurt him, they’ll kill him! And even if they don’t kill Mitchell that will as good as kill him anyway!”

  
“Annie we’d never make it, and even if we did then they’d catch us too. We’d be playing right into Herrick’s hands.”

  
There is a firm knock on the door that startles them sharply. When George looks through the view hole he sees what appears to be a delivery man carrying a medium sized box and wearing a santa hat, his breath coming in white puffs. He is an older gentleman, gruff, short, garbed in a brown uniform and looking nonplussed about being at his job so late on a holiday, the fuzzy pom pom of the hat brushing brightly against his graying five O’clock shadow and thin line of his impatient mouth.

  
He looks innocuous enough, but…

  
George grabs a small hand mirror and hands it to Annie. “Annie, go out there and check if he has a reflection.”

Annie sags at this request but nods, and a few minutes later, after confirming that the deliveryman is safe and the package legitimate, they have the package safely inside and have closed the door.

Together they open it. A DVD player, Pride and Prejudice, North by Northwest, and a brief note.

“Merry Holidays, guys! See you tonight for dinner,  
(George,I’ll be your designated driver tonight mate, no worries)  
Love Mitchell and Anders XXX”  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------  
Anders has fallen asleep against Mitchell’s shoulder. The Kiwi is exhausted from his ordeal, overcome by his emotional fight with a demon...a fight which he won but which cost him...Mitchell strokes his hair gently, worrying.

He knows Herrick will come soon to check on him, on them, ...and he will have certain expectations.

The effects of the drug seem to have worn off. Whether enough time has passed, or whether the effects of Bragi, or Anders, or his emotional bond with Anders, have resulted in the drug being neutralized, he is uncertain, but the evidence is clear.

Mitchell’s control over his mind and body remains his own. The dark urge that had filled him is no longer there, no longer pushing him to feed, no longer filling his mind with thoughts of violence and encouraging him to disregard any thoughts of decency, morality or consequences. He would not have believed it possible. His metabolism is slow, his heart only beats a few times an hour. By all logic the chemistry of the drug should still be working in him.

He holds Bragi’s cup in his free hand, touching the cold metal. Just a bit of pewter poured into an industrial mold and advertized and bought off a website. But it had saved him--both of them. Because it had brought memories flooding in to him that had acted like an injection of pure penicillin against a systemic infection. And even that might not have been enough except for the particular strength of those memories, the warmth of them, the emotional truth of them. And still, even all that might not have worked except that the voice that delivered those memories came from the warm sleeping human in his arms, this particular human man who had such a “hold” on him, as Herrick had said in frustration.

Herrick thought him weak, had always thought his affection for humans constituted weakness. Now that his memory of the past evening was coming back to him, Mitchell realizes with a wry smile that even his own demon, the one residing in his own body, doesn’t think much of him. “...piece of spineless introspective shit” was it? “sentimental sap”...

Anders shifts slightly against him, his hand flutters and grasps at the soft fabric of Mitchell’s shirt and an anxious sound comes from his throat. Mitchell can see the rapid eye movements under his eyelids and he wraps his free hand around Anders’ seeking hand and buries his mouth in the Kiwi’s hair, shushing soothingly. Anders quiets.

There is power here. Herrick can tell himself any Fairy story he likes. And not only because of the Norse God that occupies the kiwi’s body. It had been the same with Josie. That same fearlessness, just a tiny slip of a human girl, completely defenseless, he could have snapped her in half. But she’d seen in the space a few minutes more of who Mitchell was than Herrick had ever seen. It had been why Mitchell had been drawn to her from the beginning. She had somehow known, just as Anders knew, that the demon was weaker than the man...

Herrick doesn’t know Mitchell at all. Not the real Mitchell.  
The demon coils in his mind, subdued, but still trying. Suggestions keep emerging, but Mitchell senses them now as though he were watching them on a pub television from outside in the street, through thick glass, his feet firmly set on the ground.

“ _Fucking Norse god, need to bring him down a notch…”_

_“Little Anders has a sweet face, but no business thinking he could ever be the equal of a vampire of Mitchell’s status…”_

_“No Norse god should be thinking that a vampire should be relocating all the way to New Zealand just for HIM…”_

_I always know where you are, Mitchell…_

Mitchell closes his eyes, hearing his sire’s voice speak those ominous words. But if the connection goes one way, couldn’t it go the other way as well? He follows the thread of demon suggestions, seeking the source, steeling himself, his mouth firming into a line, uncertain of this path, having never tried, never dared to try such a bold thing before…

  
_Lust hits him first. Not for anything as banal as sex, not even for blood...although that urge shudders through him...a tool, merely, just a means to an end...a way to rest his hands on marionette strings, to press his feet down upon necks, to pull and push and surround as he smiles over his domain like an evil Cheshire cat…_

  
_Sated...Herrick is sated and stirring slowly...close by...books line shelves in dusty rows...candles burn low and light flickers in the dead eyes of a young homeless man slumped against Herrick’s finely polished leather shoes crossed casually over each other on the couch where he rests...he savors the taste of conquering...he can add the Norse God to his personal pantheon of murders now...and using Mitchell to do the deed burns brightly in his belly more intensely than the best of orgasms…_   
_They should be done by now, cooking time over...he wants to see his favorite’s handiwork...can’t wait to see…._

  
Mitchell opens his eyes and nuzzles against Anders’ forehead. There is only one chance, and it’s a long one.

He wakes Anders, shaking him gently.

  
Anders lifts his head, blinking, seeming to have forgotten for a disorienting moment where he is. As reality dawns, he sighs heavily, meeting Mitchell’s equally anxious gaze.

  
“Is it time?”

  
Mitchell nods, and then his eyes abruptly turn black, his fangs slowly drop.

  
“Scared?”

  
“Yes.”  
 _\------------------------------------------_

  
George knew they could not risk going to the funeral parlor until dawn.

  
Mitchell had described these Holiday “parties” to him once. The vampires would be at their weakest in the morning, having fed all night long, they would all be suffering from what amounted to a mass hangover in the morning. A short span of time when they would be “sleeping” prior to waking to the full advantage of having fed from their many victims, just a short time in which he and Annie might be able to help…

  
It had taken quite a lot of convincing to prevent Annie from charging over to the funeral parlor before dawn. Anders would never survive that long. All would be lost by then. They had to go immediately…

  
But in the end even Annie had known that if they had tried to rescue their friends from the coven that Christmas eve, they would only have become two more victims…  
Mitchell and Anders were on their own t’il morning.

  
George and Annie watch the sky and the street all night long. Around 4 am, the police car starts its engine and slowly rolls away through the deepening snow.  
The implications are not lost on either of them. They dare not look at each other. Annie’s voice cracks only slightly as she speaks.

  
“George, do you think it’s time? Should we go now…?”

  
“No. It could be a trap.”

  
They wait for the sun.

  
Morning is still stormy. Snow still falls in large crystals, sideways in fact, and the sky smokes a dark grey. The wind howls for entrance into every crack of the pink house on the corner of Windsor Terrace.

  
Annie comes to her feet stiffly, leaving George’s side for the first time all night. She returns with her arms full of winter wraps and George’s snow boots. Wordlessly and without looking at him she pulls George to his feet, pushes his feet into his boots and ties them tightly, helps him on with his coat, his hat with the ear flaps, and winds a fuzzy scarf around his neck so many times that--

  
“Annie? Annie dear, I can’t see.”

  
“Oh! Sorry…”

  
Well at least if anyone is going to be coming after his jugular they will have a job of it.

  
The plows have not come through yet, but though the road is snowy, at least there is no plowed ridge of snow closing their car in. The engine starts reluctantly and the steering wheel feels cold, but the car rolls through the snow willingly enough. He sighs heavily, grateful for Annie beside him, but worried for her, needing to say something, needing to warn her...

  
“Annie, even if they’re all right, you know that ...where we’re going….what we may have to see--”

  
“Drive, George, just drive.”

  
There is no one else on the road. The car finally gets stuck in a drift a block from the funeral parlor. Annie walks toward the entrance to the parlor as though she were walking into battle. George has never seen her like this. He hurries to her side and slots his arm into hers, not looking at her, but needing the contact. She grasps his hand in a vice like grip and they forge on together.

  
The parlor has a look of abandonment about it, as though no one has been there for months. shuttered windows flap and bang in the icy wind, and there is a unearthly quality to the howl that filters through and around the old building.

  
Annie sets her hand against the door with such vehemence that it does not dare resist her.

  
And the corridor and entryway are suddenly open to them. George suffers more than Annie for his wolf senses are overwhelmed by the scent of death, not the kind of death that comes as human death most often comes, after illness, or old age, or by accident--this is sudden and violent death, the death that came untimely, to those too young, the “Oh my god that should never have happened” death that comes to those who deserved more life, should have had more time, never should have had to die that way, never that way…

  
George gags on the coppery sick taste of it, but steels himself because he knows _Annie needs him, Mitchell and Anders need him…_

  
_And then suddenly he sees Mitchell, his friend, his mate, his rescuer once. There he is in that doorway just up ahead, facing Herrick, the coven leader, George knows well, with his arms full of someone…_

  
_He focuses on Mitchell first because he must. His friend’s eyes are black. His voice rasps deeply, threatening his sire, threatening anyone who would approach the bundle in his arms._

  
_“Do you remember what I told you, Herrick? What I said I would do if you harmed him?”_

"But I didn't harm him Mitchell...that was all you my dear..."

"You will not touch him, you will NOT!"

  
_“Of course, Mitchell. But we have the ovens here, surely it would be easier to travel with ashes than with a corpse? I am only thinking of your comfort darling…”_

  
_Corpse. Ashes. Ovens…_

  
_Annie’s scream only touches the edges of George’s consciousness. It seems to go on and on. He does not realize until Mitchell is in front of him, looking at him with those eyes, those inky black eyes, that he is screaming too…_

  
_Anders droops in Mitchell’s arms like a giant rag doll. His eyes are closed, his skin as pale as the snow that blows in around their feet, his throat an apparent open wound, blood dripping brightly and thickly from his tipped forehead, and more from his fingertips that hang at a crazy angle from one dangling arm._

  
_“Mitchell...no...you couldn’t have…”_

  
_“I could, and I did.”_

  
_“ I thought you were stronger...I really thought you’d resist…”_

  
_“I’m a monster, you stupid Lycos, I told you that from the beginning...you should have believed me.”_

  
_“Mitchell….?”_

  
_“Go back to your safe little home, George, go back to your lair and curl up and whine like the pathetic puppy you are.”_

  
_And Mitchell shoulders his way brusquely past him, as though they had never known each other at all._   
_\----------------------------------------------_

  
George is never certain how they arrived back at home. He only remembers cold, and wind, and snow that blankets them, snow and storm for which he is grateful because he and Annie can hide within it, can somehow carry each other’s dead listless weight between each other, a real storm that blocks the cold irony of colorful Christmas lights that blink from houses along the way where families inside are whole and well and where no one has died and where vampires, werewolves and ghosts only exist in stories reserved for Halloween…

  
Once inside the pink house on the corner of Windsor Terrace, George and Annie hole up like ground hogs for days. George takes days off from work partially because he is fairly certain he will be unable to complete the simplest of tasks but more because he is terrified of leaving Annie who is so devastated that she has become nearly transparent and George thinks she may blow away with the next stiff breeze. When he reaches for her his hand passes through her until it finally catches at her, at something which he assumes is still her, stubborn, stoic, refusing to give in. George finds himself reaching for his star of David pendant constantly, wrapping his fingers around it, pressure building behind his eyes that he denies. They do not speak much. The DVD player and discs go unopened. The snow swirls to a stop in the windows, and the sun does finally emerge. They both avoid anything in the house that has to do with Mitchell.

  
Until one day, as the sun’s rays shine in a blaring line irritatingly across the kitchen table, and George sets his laptop up and engages with the internet for the first time in days…

  
and there is an electronic ring, a skype summons from New Zealand.

  
George clicks on the link, and Anders’ tousled blond head appears, his blue eyes shining, his smile sheepish.

  
“Hello George.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry took so long to get this chapter done. Very difficult November, the hardest I've ever had. Hope the story continues to entertain you. Thank you so much for reading. Happy Holiday!


	11. Chapter 11

_“Close your eyes.”_

_Anders does. He feels Mitchell’s fingertips on the side of his head, and then he is sliding, falling, all is tingling as though a million snowflakes are touching him, penetrating into his skull, flowing through skin and muscle and into his bones…_

_A distant pain blossoms in his neck, and then all goes black._

_And then his eyes are open again and he’s gasping for breath. He’s on his back, hard metal under his head, and Mitchell’s face hovers above him, eyes wide, saying his name over and over…_

_They are in the hospital morgue. So far the plan had worked. Herrick had believed their bluff, and George and Annie’s appearance had made it even more believable, as awful as that had been for them. The storm had been an additional piece of luck, covering Mitchell’s long journey to the hospital with an apparent dead body in his arms. And they were exactly where Herrick would expect them to be, in the morgue where Mitchell could prepare and place Anders into a container that airport officials would accept onto a plane…_

_And conveniently close to medical supplies that Anders desperately needs._

_Mitchell wraps him in blankets and places pillows under him and around him, and sets up an IV stand first with pints of blood, and then two full bags of saline. The next part of the plan is risky and Anders will need all his strength. The wounds on Anders neck had been made to look much worse than they are; Mitchell had bitten carefully and spread the blood to give the illusion of a larger more violently received laceration. But the two puncture wounds are nonetheless deep and sore, and Mitchell is full of apologies as he cleans and bandages the area for Anders, who tuts soothingly and lightly complains about his ruined shirt._

_Mitchell hunts around and finds another set of clothes for Anders from the employee lockers down the hall. They both still has all of their cards and IDs in their coat pockets; the vampires hadn’t taken those, so they both have means and ID’s to get home. Anders changes into the clothes which are shabby and bulky, including a shapeless cap that covers his hair, so he will be somewhat disguised when the time comes._

_Fortunately Anders is not particularly claustrophobic. Climbing into a body bag, though, is not the most pleasant of experiences. They don’t close it, leaving Anders’ head and shoulders out. Mitchell leaves temporarily and returns with the hospital official in charge of death certificates. They had already planned this very carefully, and Bragi takes over, leading the man step by step through the writing of the certificate, the official stamping and filling in of forms required for the transport of a corpse, and sharing of all other information Mitchell will need to get the container through the airport and past customs._

_Once the official has served his purpose and gone, Mitchell removes a real corpse in its sealed bag from storage, a John Doe, and places it in the container. He tucks blankets over it, and lifts Anders in on top of it. There isn’t much room but luckily Anders is small. Mitchell hates to put him in there, but they can’t afford to let the illusion slip yet. He knows now that Herrick really does know where he is, and he’ll have spies watching as well. Anders will only need to be in there for the ride to the airport where he’ll let Anders out and they will separate, with Anders getting himself on the first flight out, and Mitchell taking the container through official routes to a New Zealand bound plane._

_But when the moment comes for him to close the container over Anders Mitchell slumps, his hands shake on the lid and he can’t bring himself to do it. Anders looks up at him and the two regard each other with thousands of words passing unsaid between them._

_Finally Anders reaches up to tuck a black curl back over Mitchell’s ear._

_“Best Christmas ever. Swear to god.”_

_Mitchell’s face breaks into the smile Anders needed to see, and vampire leans down and touches his forehead to Anders’._

_“I’ll make this all up to you somehow, I promise.”_

_“I’ll hold you to that.”_  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

George doesn’t believe it at first. He thinks he may have simply activated an old record of a skype from weeks before, but the date reads January first, and Anders is really there, talking to him live, and alive.

Relief. Joy. Lightness. Warm surge of faith in his friend returning in waves of “ _I knew it, I fucking knew it!!!!_ ” in his head, until--

“HE’S ALIVE??? HE’S ACTUALLY ALIVE?????!!! THAT WHOLE TIME???!!! THAT WHOLE THING WAS A TRICK????!!!”

A loud mechanical groan echoes through the plumbing of the pink house and lights flicker on and off in the kitchen around George as Annie clutches at his shoulders quite solidly and rants into the electronic screen.

“OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU LET US FRET ALL NIGHT LONG AND THEN WHEN WE CAME HALFWAY ACROSS TOWN IN A FUCKING STORM YOU LET US STAND THERE AND BELIEVE ANDERS WAS FUCKING DEAD AND YOU’D TURNED INTO A FUCKING ASSHOLE AND JUST WALKED OUT ON US AND LEFT US THERE ALONE WITH FUCKING HERRICK LEARING AT US AND OH MY GOD LET ME AT THAT SCREEN GEORGE I’M SO PISSED OFF YOU’RE ALIVE I’M COMING OVER THERE RIGHT NOW TO FUCKING KILL YOU!!!!!!”

The cabinet doors behind and George and Annie are flying open and shut at this point and several objects from the kitchen counter have elevated into the air around Annie, including among other things, a garlic press, a metal whisk, and a large sharp looking butcher knife. They all begin spinning in the air on their axes as Annie’s supernatural rage fills the room.

Anders turns slightly and looks nervously at Mitchell, who is right there sitting behind Anders although he does not show up on George’s computer screen.

“Can she actually do that…?”

Mitchell is not entirely certain that she _can’t_. But he reassures Anders nonetheless.

“WHAT DO YOU EVEN HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELVES???!!!”

“Erm,” stammers Anders, “Happy New Year?”

Mitchell rolls his eyes and smacks him. “How on earth did you ever get so many women to sleep with you?”

Anders looks well ready to retort to this but George is looking desperate for help, The butcher knife is spinning alarmingly fast, Annie looks like she really MIGHT rent-a-ghost all the way to Auckland and Mitchell steps calmly forward.

“Annie, please, we’re so sorry.”

Annie’s eyes widen, but her stance is unimpressed. She folds her arms tightly and taps her fingers on one elbow, glowering at the screen ominously.

“Mitchell.” This comes out hissed.

“You and George saved us. You could not have timed your arrival more perfectly. If you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t reacted the way you did, I’m not sure Herrick would have believed our bluff. He wasn’t completely convinced until he saw how upset you both were. You saved our lives Annie, and George’s too.”

Annie quiets just a bit. But she is not mollified yet.

“You could have given us a hint, Mitchell. Some sign. We’re not stupid, you know, we wouldn’t have blown your cover!”

“No, no of course you’re not stupid, Annie. I know that. But neither is Herrick. I couldn’t take the risk. Not with George’s and Anders’ lives on the line and a hundred sleeping vampires around us about to waken.”

Annie finally takes a deep breath and her face softens. The house around them quiets, and abruptly all of the kitchen utensils that had been spinning in the air clatter loudly to the floor much to George’s alarm as his hands fly up to protect his head.

“Hmmph.” Annie looks at the screen dubiously. “So...Herrick was fooled, do you think?”

Mitchell smiles grimly. “For now. He thinks I’ve brought Anders’ body to New Zealand, that my heart is broken and that I’ve completely severed my friendship with the two of you. That’s the best part of all, in fact. So long as he believes that you two hate me and are suffering without me, he won’t bother you.”

Mitchell takes a breath then, and speaks again. “George, “ he says carefully “I’m sorry for those awful things I said to you. I didn’t mean--”

“S-Okay mate. I got that.” George smiles gently at the empty space next to Anders’ head where he supposes Mitchell is sitting. “All part of the illusion, then?”

“Yes George. Please don’t ever think otherwise. You are absolutely the bravest mate I know to walk into a fully populated vampire coven like you did to help me. I won’t ever forget it.”

They all relax into the affection that fills them then. At length Anders and Mitchell tell Annie and George all about the remaining details of their escape from Bristol.

“So…”Says George finally, looking pointedly at the screen, “How long do you think Herrick will stay fooled?”

Mitchell sighs heavily. “Hopefully he won’t have any reason to doubt that my friendship with you two is over. You could reinforce that illusion by taking a bunch of my stuff out of my bedroom and throwing it out on the curb.”

Annie and George both protest at this, and Anders looks anxiously at Mitchell, “You sure that’s necessary mate?”

But Mitchell smiles and hugs Anders close. George and Annie see Anders’ hair ripple on its own as though tousled by an invisible hand, which of course is accurate.  
“I have everything I need right here.”

Annie melts and _awwws_ loudly and George cringes and thinks he might throw up.

“Right so we throw out your stuff and weep over it on the sidewalk. That covers us. What about you two?” Says George, back to business.

“Not so simple.” Says Mitchell, serious again. “He really does know where I am no matter where I go. We just found that out. And he will eventually find out that Anders is alive and well and that we tricked him. He won’t like that. He’ll be very angry with both of us, and he will certainly come after us again. But at least this time it won’t be on his own turf, and we know some things about him and about ourselves that we didn’t know before.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was difficult to sign off. When the screen finally goes to black, Mitchell stares at it for a moment, seemingly lost in thought.

They had only been reunited the day before. Mitchell had managed to arrive with the container and its unknown body on the 27th, and after dealing with it as quickly and quietly as possible, arranging a cremation and pretending to mourn solitarily over a “friend” who was then buried at sea at a local dock.

He’d gone to see Dawn at JPR and let her know Anders was OK and coming home soon. Dawn had been thrilled to see him and had hugged him, grateful for the information and generously thrusting a cupcake into his hands as he left.

And then Mitchell had gone to Mike’s bar. He told Mike everything, about Anders traveling to Bristol, about Herrick’s attack, the details of their escape, the ruse of the corpse in the container, and the importance of continuing the illusion until Anders arrived safely in New Zealand.

Mike had NOT been thrilled to see him, had NOT hugged him, had NOT been grateful for the information and had certainly NOT given him any cupcakes.

But Mike would guard their secret and inform the rest of the Johnson family and tell them to do the same.

When Anders had finally arrived after having taken an air route that zigzagged across most of Asia he’d been exhausted but very happy to see Mitchell. They’d spent most of the next day in bed together, sleeping, talking, making love languidly as the sun went down, as they waited for a decent Bristol time to call George and Annie.

Now that the call has been made and they know their friends are safe they rest even easier. They relax back onto the bed together, Mitchell flopping onto his stomach and Anders cuddling against him and tracing circles on his back. Mitchell hadn’t been certain, back in Bristol, if he would return with Anders to New Zealand or not. But now that the decision has been made for them, with the Bristol vampires turned deadly against them and he and Anders climbing onto planes with not so much as a carry-on or even a toothbrush, and furthermore Mitchell knowing that most of his belongings in Bristol are about to be junked, he feels strangely liberated.

“So where is he now?”

Anders has taken to asking this every now and then, and Mitchell knows he means Herrick.

So he closes his eyes and seeks for his sire. Since that first time he tried it, Mitchell has found that this “path” feels more and more familiar and possible to find even though he is half a world away from Herrick. He is also fairly certain that what he is able to sense of his sire differs greatly from what his sire can sense of him.

I _mpressions come first, of satisfaction, contentment, sun shining on a snowy sidewalk, humans passing and smiling at him...so stupid these humans...so gullible...his police uniform completely fools them…_

_He is king here. Bristol belongs to him. He has proven that firmly now and he has taught Mitchell a delicious lesson and that ghost and werewolf have learned it too, so all is well, and when the time is right he’ll travel to Aukland and use what he has learned about Norse gods and how weak their vessels become when they are foolish enough to fall in love…_

Mitchell smiles grimly. Yes, Herrick knows where Mitchell is. But Herrick cannot read much more than that. Mitchell suspects that his sire might feel it when he is angry, or in pain, or feeding...but not more than that. That would require a heart.

“Bristol...I don’t sense he’s in a hurry to leave.”

“Good. Hey, you remember what you said before you closed me into that coffin about promising to make it up to me?”

Mitchell turns his head on the pillow and smiles sideways at Anders, who has climbed fully on top of him and is pressing his mouth against Mitchell’s cheekbone, his warm human arms covering Mitchell’s arms that are wrapped around and under the pillow.

“I thought that’s what I was doing…?”’

“Well yeah, of course, yeah, “says Anders softly, “But I’m just realizing that you left all your clothes behind in Bristol--”

Mitchell buries his face in the pillow and groans.

“--and your friends are going to be throwing them all out--”

“Anders--”

“--if you reeeeeally want to make it up to me you should let me take you shopping. Properly this time.”

“Oh god, Anders.”

Suddenly he doesn’t feel so liberated.

“Come on Mitchell, you liked that one outfit I picked out, didn’t you?”

Yes, he supposed he did.

But…

Mitchell turns around under Anders and draws him in close, his hands tangling in his hair, drinking in blue eyes, twisted mouth, curving bare shoulder. He traces a thumb across Anders’ stubbled jaw.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about you, do you know that?” says Mitchell, “not a single thing.”

Anders grins ruefully and ducks his head. “Right. Got that.” He settles more comfortably into Mitchell’s arms.

“Skinny jeans and flannel shirts it is then.”

It isn’t until a few minutes later during a particularly nice moment of open mouthed kissing that Mitchell feels Anders shoulders shuddering and his lips pull back into a laugh he can’t seem to suppress.

“Whaaat?” protests Mitchell.

“I’ll fix your wagon.” giggles Anders, toying affectionately with Mitchell curls.

“I’ll send you shopping with Axl and Zebb.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Happy New Year!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and for all the kind kudoes and comments, and particularly to FiliKiliThorinForever for all the support and encouragement.
> 
> I return them to you intact as promised, everyone's happy, even Herrick.


End file.
